The now-times of (post) apartheid

Abstract

This commentary explores the multi-temporalities of the pasts which relate to South African cities ‘now’. Inspired by Myriam Houssay-Holzchuch’s article in this volume, and the wider engagements of French scholars in the South African context, this commentary takes as a starting point Walter Benjamin’s idea of history as thought through ‘now-time’. In doing so, I assess the declining relevance of the ‘post’ in thinking the futures of South African cities.

Of waters and bridges

“…Moreover, how long does that specific prefix stay relevant? ‘The meaning of many different elements of South Africa’s cities has been unsettled by the dynamic nature of urbanisation such that the constellations of spaces and times which make sense of the urban “now” bear no clear relationship to the historical object, “apartheid city”‘, argues Jenny Robinson (2021), who powerfully states that we have to ‘reach escape velocity from apartheid as the explanatory tether’. While some advocate saying ‘goodbye’ to postsocialism (Müller, 2019), and others turn to post-post-apartheid (see e.g.…”

“…My answer is from their future, because our conversation has temporalities and spatialities. From the here and now of my writing, the past has changed, and what was significant in it has also changed as Robinson (2021) highlights. From the now, a temporal analysis is needed of the different pasts.…”

“…tend to theorize from specific places or moments, or tend to look at one from the other. In Jennifer Robinson’s (2021) terms, we look at some places from the now, at the now from specific places, new pasts, and revived futures; whatever the case, space and time remain disjointed. This encourages me to enrich our analysis of spaces and times further: separately, as different disciplines do; in a mirror, examining one side from a specific and explicit vantage point situated on the ‘other’ side and then switching; conjoined and co-constitutive, which, as I understand it, the brecciation concept allows.…”