The Political Value of Disappointment among Ex-resistance Fighters: Confronting the Grey Zone of Founding

Abstract

This essay examines how the disappointment of ex-resistance fighters can illuminate the grey zone of founding—the ambiguity of beginning anew against the background of systemic violence that eludes the predominant linear visions of transition. For a theoretical framework, I draw on Hannah Arendt’s insights into the ambiguity of beginning anew as a practice of attunement that takes oppressive practices as points of departure for democratizing political action. I explore how the ex-resisters’ stories of disappointment can invigorate this practice, focusing on their ability to reorient political action towards reframing unjust relationships in a way that guards against systematic exclusions in the future. This essay demonstrates the political relevance of disappointment on the example of a South African ex-resister’s memoir, Pregs Govender’s Love and Courage. Govender’s narrative discloses how experiences of disappointment can orient the ex-resisters’ efforts to confront the complexities of founding obscured from the official story.

Knotted memories of a betrayed sacrifice: Rethinking trauma and hope in South Africa

“…Thus, a methodology of hope ‘dwells in the region of the not-yet’ (Bloch cited in Van der Vlies, 2017: 14) and requires continued action. Instead of placing hope in a transcendent idea or leader, a re-imagined hope may come directly out of the painful conditions of the present, to constructively guide people towards what needs to be addressed in the present (Mrovlje, 2020). Hope-in-action is therefore generated through a sense of agency to act on the painful conditions of the present and to work towards transforming these in the here-and-now.…”

Grey Zones of Resistance and Contemporary Political Theory

“…Critical theorists have grounded visions of a better future in a careful engagement with past defeats, losses and failures as propitious sources for rethinking the forms of critique for the contemporary era (Winters 2016;Thaler 2019;McIvor 2016). Finally, scholars working in the field of political memory have exposed the troubling political implications of hegemonic myths of heroic resistance in societies transitioning from violent pasts, drawing attention to the ambivalences of political agency in circumstances of pervasive repression (Leebaw 2019;Mihai 2019a;Mrovlje 2017Mrovlje , 2020.…”