Helena Pohlandt-McCormick University of Minnesota (Northfield, MN 55057-1574)
FB-51632-05
Fellowships for College Teachers and Independent Scholars
Research Programs
|
Totals:
$40,000 (approved) $40,000 (awarded)
Grant period:
2/1/2006 – 1/31/2007
|
Stories of Exile: South African Resistance to Apartheid, 1960-1990
To understand the exile experience in South Africa (1960-1990), I propose a fieldwork-based historical study of in-depth oral life histories, backed by archival research, with former political exiles representative of the several generations and multiple – gendered – experiences of exile, defined broadly as external political exile, internal exile, banishment and displacement, and as exile of the mind, political exclusion and psychological alienation. A history of the nature and experience of exile and of its association with loss and memory is timely and necessary if South Africa is to make a decisive break with the apartheid past – with its history of silencing individuals, traumatizing society, and deliberately distorting public memory.
|