The disappointment of nostalgia: conceptualising cultures of memory in contemporary South Africa

Worby, Eric; Ally, Shireen

doi:10.1080/02533952.2013.852371

Cited by 31 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…12. Dlamini ( 2009) and Worby and Ally (2013) provide insightful discussions on the topic of nostalgia in post-Apartheid South Africa. My research assistants spoke positively about the past in general.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Blaming the father: witchcraft, de-industrialisation and generation in South Africa

Niehaus

2021

Anthropology Southern Africa

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Africa -such increased hardships at a time of heightened expectations -with a proliferation in witchcraft accusations. This article examines this postulate in greater depth, drawing upon multi-temporal ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a village of Bushbuckridge since 1990. The evidence I gathered does not confirm any dramatic increase in accusations of witchcraft, but does show significant changes in the patterns of who is being accused. More specifically, villagers now increasingly suspect male cognates of practicing witchcraft, and sons regularly accuse their fathers. I relate these changes to processes of de-industrialization and to the AIDS epidemic that have dashed young men's expectations of progress in the period after political liberation. The ambiguous position of elderly men as marginal yet historically powerful persons, resonates with the status of witches. Villagers imagine that by having used witchcraft to attain status, health, and prosperity in the past; fathers unwittingly sacrificed the futures of their sons.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Blaming the father: witchcraft, de-industrialisation and generation in South Africa

Niehaus

2021

Anthropology Southern Africa

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“…Nostalgia works here not simply as a longing for belonging that cohered better in an imagined past (or in the present, more inclusive consumptive present/future), but rather it is its appointment to this work of image production that makes visible unsteady freedoms/un-freedoms. Perhaps to be clearer: my call to the temporality of nostalgia, as offered in Worby and Ally's (2013) discussion, aims to confront or complicate a vision or promise of the future or progress, as tied to the notion of aspiration.…”

Section: Happy Objectsmentioning

confidence: 98%

The promise of happiness: desire, attachment and freedom in post/apartheid South Africa

Mupotsa

2015

Critical Arts

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This article examines wedding photographs. The wedding day is read as a staging of the achievement of desire and love, articulated through the use of space, objects and artefacts to project a vision of the self. The wedding ritual is not only framed by the presence of the camera, the gaze of the camera actually makes sure that the script is followed. This staging of romance is read through the notion of the 'bridal gaze', which places the figure of the bride at the centre of the achievement of fairytale romance and the promise of a future 'happily ever after'. The images and affects of happiness in these 'love plots' are implicated in processes of identification and subjectivation that rely on relations of the gaze and 'the look', logics of self-image and self-possession, and the ritualised performance of romantic love as a site of freedom. I argue that nostalgia is invoked as a narrative strategy in wedding photographs in ways that place wedding rituals and the photographs produced out of them in and out of time with the present. The promise of happiness shared by the individuals 'in love', and the audiences that share in the ritualised performance of it, reflect the desire for inclusion within the progressive narrative of freedom in post/apartheid South Africa and the recognition of its flimsy presence, absence, promises and failures.

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“…The doubly transitional state experienced through the passage of time with its accompanying losses, and the transformations brought about by regime change, have led to the application of the notion of the transitional object and/or transitional space to t a sitio al a d post-t a sitio al so ieties su h as 'ussia Oushaki e, 2000'ussia Oushaki e, , 2007, South Africa (Worby and Ally, 2013;Long, 2011) and East Germany (see Brock and Truscott, 2012, for a comparison of the two contexts). Some disagreement appears to be centred on the question of whether, under these conditions, the object can aid transitio , o hethe , a esti g de elop e t Oushaki e, 2000), it in fact makes the disjuncture between then and now more palpable.…”

Section: Magical Objects Transitional Fetishesmentioning

confidence: 99%

East German museums of everyday history as depots for the nostalgic object

Brock

2019

Psychoanal Cult Soc

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The disappointment of nostalgia: conceptualising cultures of memory in contemporary South Africa

Cited by 31 publications

References 48 publications

Blaming the father: witchcraft, de-industrialisation and generation in South Africa

Blaming the father: witchcraft, de-industrialisation and generation in South Africa

The promise of happiness: desire, attachment and freedom in post/apartheid South Africa

East German museums of everyday history as depots for the nostalgic object

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