The ‘born-free generation’: Narrating past, present and future in post-apartheid South Africa. Tarryn Frankish Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Dimitris Dalakoglou (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam); Prof. Jill Bradbury (The University of Witwatersrand) Submitted to the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and The University of the Witwatersrand in fulfilment of the requirements of the joint Doctorate of Philosophy. The work contained herein is the product of my independent work and I confirm that it is not the result of plagiarism. With thanks to the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam NRF Desmond Tutu programme. 23 May 2023 i Table of Contents i Glossary of Terms vii Dedication ix Acknowledgements x Preface: A brief Autobiography xi Abstract xv Chapter One: a History and an Introduction 1 1.1 Remembering apartheid 1 1.2 ‘Born-Free’ 2 1.3 Media constructions 5 1.4 Research Focus 11 LITERATURE REVIEW: Chapter Two: Memory, Trauma and Everyday Violence 16 2.1. Memory 18 2.2 Political, social and collective memory 25 2.3 Memory in spaces, places and bodies 27 2.3.1 Space and place 27 2.3.2 Ghosts and Haunting 30 2.3.2 Embodied memory 31 2.3.3 The vulnerable or marginalised 33 2.4 Trauma/s 35 2.5 Family History, Intergenerational trauma and beyond 38 2.5.1 Traumatic silence and the need for narrative 45 2.6 Everyday Trauma and postcoloniality 50 2.7 Everday violence and identity politics 54 2.7.1 Race 56 2.7.2 Gender and Sexuality 57 2.7.3 Location and Schooling 59 2.7.4 Class 60 2.7.5 Childhood and nation 61 2.7.6 Narrative identity 63 Chapter Three: Narrative and Identity theory 64 ii 3.1 Narrative and Identity 64 3.1.1 Reaction to positivism 65 3.1.2 The Turn to language 66 3.1.3 Narrative self 68 3.2 Meaning and Interpretation 69 3.2.1 Coherence and making meaning in narrative 70 3.2.2 Plotting the life story in time 72 3.2.3 Relational 74 3.2.4 Living and Telling stories 78 3.3 Master and Counter Narratives 81 3.4 Intergenerational stories 84 Chapter Four: Methodology 88 4.1 Aims and Objectives 89 4.2 Research Questions: 89 4.3 Theoretical underpinnings: Narrative methodology 90 4.1.1 Interpretive co-constructions 91 4.1.2 Listening to stories 93 4.1.3 Visual methodologies 94 4.4 Research sites and profile of participants 95 4.4.1 Sites of Research 99 4.5 Ethics 102 4.6 Data collection 106 4.6.1 Body maps and timelines 106 a. Embodied images 107 b. Images in time 109 4.6.2 Individual interviews 110 4.7 Analysis and interpretation 111 4.7.1 Analytic approach of the project 112 4.7.2 Wengraf’s BNIM 112 a. Timing of Past, Present and Future 113 b. Timing of Thematic Foci 114 4.7.3 Reissman’s four steps 115 iii a. Narrative analysis: Dialogic/Performance analysis – Dynamics of Research 115 b. Narrative Analysis: Visual Analysis 116 c. Narrative Analysis: Structural Analysis 117 d. Narrative Analysis: Thematic Analysis 118 4.7.4 A combined approach 119 4.8 Rigour 120 4.9 Reflexivity 120 4.10 Conclusion 120 ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION Chapter Five: Analysis of Narrative co-construction - a Generation of stories 122 5.1 Narrative and visual Portraits 123 - Case Study One: Story of Duduzile Maphumulo (Dudu) 124 - Case Study Two: Story OF Xolisile Gigaba (Xoli) 132 5.2 Interview structure portraits 140 5.2.1 Geographies of telling: a brief structural analysis 141 - Case Study Three: Story of Adam Naidoo 146 - Case Study Four: Story of Zena van der Merwe 151 5.3 Interactional dynamic portraits 157 5.3.1 Interviews as contextual space of interaction: a brief interactional analysis 158 a. Township space 160 b. Suburban space 161 c. Rural space 162 - Case Study Five: Story of Njabulo Banda 162 - Case Study Six: Story of Sindiswa Thwala 167 5.4 Conclusion 175 Chapter Six: Analysis of Narrative Portraits - (Not) in their Lifetimes 177 - Case Study Seven: Story of Jabulani Dlamini 178 a. Past: Knowledge (or silence) of apartheid and Family History 185 b. Present: The Narrative Unconscious 190 c. Future: Trauma Narrative 194 - Case Study Eight: Story of Andrea Peterson 199 a. Past: Past: Knowledge (or silence) of apartheid and Family History 202 iv b. Present: Intergenerational trauma 210 c. Future: Born-Free 215 6.1 Conclusion 217 Chapter Seven: a Collective Thematic Analysis - Past, Present and Future 219 7.1 Narrative of the past: Remembering apartheid 222 7.1.1 Silence 222 71.2 Knowing (a content analysis) 223 7.1.3 Generational talk 229 7.1.4 Other sources of ‘talk’ and motivation 237 7.2 Narrative of the present: Legacy of Race/Racism 244 7.2.1 Experiences of racism 247 7.2.2 Rejecting race/racism and constructing a Rainbow nation 254 7.3 Narrative of the Future: Freedom? 259 7.3.1 Unrestricted freedom and rights 260 7.3.2 (Re)playing the past 264 7.3.3 Limits and abuses of freedom 268 7.3.4 Respect 272 7.3.5 Gendered freedoms and constraints 276 7.4 Conclusion 280 Chapter Eight: a Discussion and Conclusion 283 8.1 Past 285 8.1.1 Knowledge 286 8. 1.2 Silence 289 8.1.3 Families 291 8.2 Present 293 8.3 Future 295 8.3.1 Playful futures 296 8.4 Back to the future: moving the story forward 298 List of Figures: 1. Maps showing research sites in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa 13 2. Blank body as provided for the body mapping type method 108 3. Duduzile Maphumulo’s body mapping image 125 4. Xoli Gigaba’s timeline – Past 133 5. Xoli Gigaba’s timeline – Present 133 v 6. Xoli Gigaba’s timeline – Future 134 7. Adam Naidoo’s body mapping image 147 8. Zena van der Merwe’s body mapping image 152 9. Njabulo Banda’s body mapping image 164 10. Sindiswa Thwala’s timeline – Past 169 11. Sindiswa Thwala’s timeline – Present 169 12. Sindiswa Thwala’s timeline – Future 170 13. Jabulani Dlamini’s body mapping image 180 14. Adam Naidoo’s (left) and Jabulani Dlamini’s (right) body mapping images 182 15. Andrea Peterson’s body mapping image 200 List of Tables: 1. Profile of Participants by location 96 2. Participants Rural school 97 3. Participants Suburban school 98 4. Participants Township school 99 5. Types of data collection 106 6. Case studies of interactional dynamics 123 7. Narrative case studies 177 8. Time periods in Jabulani Dlamini’s interview 183 9. Jabulani Dlamini’s inclusion of thematic content 184 10. Time periods in Andrea Peterson’s interview 201 11. Andrea Peterson’s inclusion of thematic content 202 12. Thematic content 219 13. Content analysis of keywords regarding knowledge areas of apartheid 225 References 302 Appendices 320 Appendix One: Information letter for participants 320 Appendix Two: Consent form for participants 323 Appendix Three: Information letter for parents/guardians 324 Appendix Four: Consent form for parents/guardians 326 Appendix Five: Information letter to schools 327 Appendix Six: Consent form for principals 331 Appendix Seven: Information letter to Department of Education 332 Appendix Eight: Consent form for Department of Education 336 Appendix Nine: Topic Guide [Learners’ Personal Interviews] 337 Appendix Ten: Pilot Study 339 Appendix Eleven: Additional tables 341 1. Interview time spent on past, present and future – Township school 2. Interview time spent on past, present and future – Suburban school 3. Interview time spent on past, present and future – Rural school 4. Interview time spent on past, present and future – combined 5. Interview time spent on individual themes – Township school 6. Interview time spent on individual themes – Suburban school 7. Interview time spent on individual themes – Rural school 8. Interview time spent on individual themes – combined vi 9. Analysis of narrative content in the analytic lifelines of participants’ pasts 10. Analysis of narrative content in the analytic lifelines of participants’ presents 11. Analysis of narrative content in the analytic lifelines of participants’ futures 12. ‘traumas’ or life circumstances in the present related to family deaths and disappearances 13. ‘traumas’ or life circumstances in the present related to living situation 14. ‘traumas’ or life circumstances in the present related to other events including violations and other circumstances Appendix Twelve: Ethical clearance document Appendix Thirteen: Data lines (Time- and Interview- lines) Data Lines: 1. Duduzile Maphumulo time- and interview- lines 1C 2. Fikile Zondo time- and interview- lines 2C 3. Khanyisile Buthelezi time- and interview- lines 3C 4. Lindile Shezi time- and interview- lines 4C 5. Sipho Sithole time- and interview- lines 5C 6. Njabulo Banda time- and interview- lines 6C 7. Bhekisizwe Ngcobo time- and interview- lines 7C 8. Khethelo Xaba time- and interview- lines 8C 9. Thenjiwe Cele time- and interview- lines 9C 10. Gugu Shabangu time- and interview- lines 10C 11. Thando Mlambo time- and interview- lines 11C 12. Philani Sibiya time- and interview- lines 12C 13. Cebesile Mokhosi time- and interview- lines 13C 14. Adam Naidoo time- and interview- lines 14B 15. Zena van der Merwe time- and interview- lines 15B 16. Jabulani Dlamini time- and interview- lines 16B 17. Andrea Peterson time- and interview- lines 17B 18. Zola Zulu time- and interview- lines 18B 19. Ayanda Ntuli time- and interview- lines 19B 20. Nomalanga Shangase time- and interview- lines 20B 21. Zama Mthethwa time- and interview- lines 21B 22. Pieter Steyn time- and interview- lines 22B 23. Khetiwe Duma time- and interview- lines 23A 24. Naledi Mokhosi time- and interview- lines 24A 25. Cebesile Mchunu time- and interview- lines 25A 26. Nonhle Mkhwanazi time- and interview- lines 26A 27. Bongani Hlongwane time- and interview- lines 27A 28. Sindiswa Thwala time- and interview- lines 28A 29. Vusimuzi Msomi time- and interview- lines 29A 30. Thabile Zondo time- and interview- lines 30A 31. Jabulani Siyanda Nzimande time- and interview- lines 31A 32. Xolisile Gigaba time- and interview- lines 32A vii GLOSSARY of TERMS: ANC – African National Congress ANCYL – African National Congress Youth League Apartheid – a system of enforced and legal separation between the different races in South Africa. Instituted by the National Party (NP) in 1948, apartheid was abolished as a legal system in 1994 Bantu – May refer to the bantu people or language, drawn from the isiZulu word ‘abantu’ meaning people. Often used in a derogatory way Bantustans – (also referred to as ‘Bantu homeland’, ‘black homeland’ or ‘homeland’), used to refer to areas demarcated for ‘black’ South Africans and whose roots can be traced to the 1913 Land Act in South African politics Comrades – A term for politically aligned members of the struggle, reflective of the ANC’s relationship with the South African Communist Party [SACP] DA – Democratic Alliance DSM – Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. The standard diagnostic manual for psychological theory and practice EFF – Economic Freedom Fighters FNB – First National Bank IFP – Inkatha Freedom Party Immorality act - (Act No. 5 of 1927) a Parliament act of South Africa that prohibited extramarital sex between the white people and people of other race groups KZN – KwaZulu-Natal Necklacing - a method of brutally killing 'traitors' during the height of the apartheid struggle by placing tires around an individual's neck and setting it alight NP – National Party NWU – North-West University Rainbow Nation – A concept that encapsulates a dream for a multi-racial South Africa that values diversity from across the race spectrum. SAA – South African Airways SANDF – South African National Defence Force viii Telkom – a parastatal communications company Township – a peri-urban community designated for black occupation under apartheid and which have retained salient features of race and class after the transition to democracy TRC – Truth and Reconciliation Commission UFS – University of the Free State Wits – University of the Witwatersrand ix DEDICATION: For my promotor, Prof. Dr. Stephen Ellis (1953 - 2015). In memory of Gabriel Arthur Steenberg (1932 - 2010) and Dr. Siyanda Sabelo Simphiwe Ndlovu (1982 - 2010). x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Heartfelt thanks are due to the many people who have offered kindness, inspiration or support throughout the PhD, including: Within the Academy: Prof. Jill Bradbury, Prof. Kate Cockcroft, Prof. David Peimer, Julie Poyser, Hale Modau, and Dr. Sabrina Liccardo at the University of the Witwatersrand. Prof. Dr Dimitris Dalakoglou, Dr. Harry Wels, Collette Gerards, Neeria Oostra, Dr. Femke Brandt, Elina Baaten, Marit Oudendijk, Dr. Dhoya Snijders, Dr. Nancy Andrews, Dr. Duane Jethro, Dominique Doyle, Dr. Nomalanga Mkhize and Dr. Jacob Meiring at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Ella Verkaik at the Leiden University Afrika Studiecentrum library. Dr. Carol Nonkwelo, Rose Robertson and Danielle Nel at the NRF. Prof. Gerrie Mare (of the ccrri), Prof. Anthony Collins, Dr. Finn Reygan, Dr. Kerry Frizelle, Patricia Mthethwa, Zamaphemba Ntuli and my students, especially Nombuso Mbatha who assisted with coding, at UKZN. My former and current colleagues and students at the Durban University of Technology, including: Prof. Richard Milham, Dr. Mamothibe Thamae, Ayesha Mall, Deseni Soobben, Dr. Maud Blose, Sphelele Ngubani, Andrea Alcock, Robin Sewlal, Lindiwe Ntombela, Dr. René Smith, Ntando Nxumalo, Mpho Matibe and Senzo Mnomiya. I would also like to include a special thank you to Dr Philippa Kethro; Dr Mo Salomon and Charlene Mc Intosh for guidance and light in the darkness. For her assistance with the transcription: Busi Thobela. To my parents, Deniese and Robert Frankish, for their endless love and support. I also extend a special thanks to all my family and friends: Sheldon Frankish, Byron Frankish, Jeanette Steenberg, Suzette Steenberg, Gerhard Steenberg, Rachelle-Jean Steenberg, Bridgette Steenberg, Jonathan Amid, Patrick Goodman, Dr. Chet Fransch, Bruce Robertson, Michael Nock, Welile Tembe, Navin Ramsamuj, Monique James, Dr. Anslyn John, Elizabeth Cambanis, Dr. Simone Plug, Emcy Garner, One Selohilwe, Biniam Misgun, Dr. Kathryn Pillay, Samantha Schwarer, Melissa Poorter, Sheetal Cross, Marina Du Preez and Elsie Tshabalala. With kindness. Lastly for the magic, all my love to Johannes Du Preez. xi I am indebted to you all and to my participants who hold all of our hopes and dreams for the future. xii PREFACE: A brief AUTOBIOGRAPHY. On the 27th of April 2013, one of the participants of the project that follows contacted me and asked me 'what do you remember about this day?1'. Her question reminded me that the themes of this project resonate very personally with my own story. A story which inspired and directed my work in big and small ways. That the researcher cannot be extricated from the research they produce is an idea that qualitative work, broadly, recognises. It seems pertinent therefore to disclaim upfront who I am and the ways an apartheid past has shaped my own life and psychology. Born in 1985 in Pretoria my formative years were spent in the (relatively) protected white spaces of first, Pretoria and then Durban suburbia. I grew up in a family of civil servants, of men who found work as clerks, artisans and tradesmen for, then nationalised, corporations like Telkom and the railways and women who supplemented family incomes by taking up secretarial and administrative positions in schools, banks and postal services. Military service in the South African Defence Force (SANDF) was an unavoidable duty for a number of members of my extended family, particularly where financial opportunities to pursue extended education were limited and while my formative years were characterised by movement, by 1990 my small nuclear family unit had grown and settled in Durban, with the births of two younger brothers. Memories of my childhood reflect on the 'simplicity' of a life lived outdoors, connected to family and friends. Humid Durban days were spent high in frangipani trees, wrestling with my brothers and writing stories with a childhood best friend. That my family had paid employment meant opportunities for some of the "opulence" of middle-class including land ownership, decent education and the occasional 'caravanning vacation' (as was popular and affordable at the time). One morning a week, a black woman who also worked at the primary school I attended, would come to do our ironing. She became 1 See the section of analysis related to the researcher/participant dynamics for a more detailed discussion of this conversation. xiii an important woman in my life, showing me empathy and love in both the spaces in which I knew her. I was 5 years old in 1990 when Mandela was released from prison and 9 when he took charge as the first democratically elected president of South Africa. My memory of the first democratic elections is vague. I recall long, multi-racial queues and conversations regarding how and where our domestic worker would vote and another more pessimistic view given by a family member about the future of the country. Inconsistent with the facts of the time, I also remember standing in one of the queues with my family: a false memory probably supplanted from images of the day that I have seen subsequently and personal memories of later elections. Having attended a private, catholic primary school (from ages 6 - 8) and then a (newly) multi-racial senior primary school from 1994, I was already accustomed to not only attending school alongside black South African peers but we shared toilets (to hark back to apartheid segregations), play, books and ideas so there was no clear rupture in my life from before the elections and after. Some things did, however, change almost immediately after the elections. I recall learning the new anthem and the new flag, a shift at school in what we called each level of study (from standards to grades) and we no longer had "riot drills" to prepare us for the 'terrorists' that we had previously been told were coming for us. Each of these marked specific and deliberate changes in the political landscape but for a child carried little meaning or history. I did not know who the terrorists were that we had heard were coming, I did not know why they would want to come for us, nor did I know why they were no longer coming. These things were not explained. In the course of my everyday life I may have noticed that I no longer practiced hiding under my school desks (and that instead we had more fire and bomb drills) but I did not pay it much attention. As children do, I was much more concerned with the immediacies of things like what I had for lunch and whether I had remembered my swimming costume. xiv Other changes unfolded somewhat more gradually. By 1998 when I left for high school, life in the suburbs was relatively unchanged. We were never ‘wealthy’ and there were often harder times but my parents had kept their employment from before the change-over of government, our domestic worker came to work for us as usual and I continued going to the same school and following the same routine. A 'late-bloomer' perhaps, it was only as an idealist teenager that I started to become more fully conscious of the things happening in the socio-political sphere. In 1998 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission featured regularly on the news and radio. I was encouraged to pursue courses in History at school, and celebrated with South Africa that apartheid was over, identifying strongly with notions of 'the rainbow nation' coming from Desmond Tutu. The stories told on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) stage, made me curious about my own history and my family's stories, in particular their time in the South African National Defense Force (SANDF). While the questions around my own family stories have been told, re-told and silenced in my ongoing interactions with them, the questions that started so long ago for me about how family stories matter has carried with me as I form my own story about who I am, and as I embark on this research. xv ABSTRACT This thesis examines the role of present violence and trauma in relation to historical memory among school going youth at schools in KwaZulu-Natal. The project springboarded off questions around how ‘born-free’ South Africans navigate, narrate and relate to the apartheid past as they create their future. Thereby taking after work which explores identity, adversity and agency amongst children and adolescents in South Africa after Apartheid. The point of analysis shifted however to hinge on present conditions and identity and life constructed in relation to ongoing violence, racism and discrimination in the context. In this way the project design moves through a look at South Africa’s past and the transition to democracy to a lens centred around the present. It is commonplace to treat the moment of transition to democracy in South Africa’s history as a fissure against which violence and racism would ‘never again’ be experienced (Jansen, 2009). By treating time as a ‘fissure’ point South Africans claimed those born after democracy to be ‘free’ from structural and racist violence and for whom the world was their oyster. By focusing in on this next generation of South Africans, this project explores the ways that the past is (re)constructed by young people as they navigate lives in the present and the future. The analysis focuses on the socio-economic legacies that are embedded in the systematic and structural challenges of everyday violence. This analysis includes a look at class, race, gender and place as they are aligned with psychosocial studies on memory, trauma and narrative and the questions that are raised about the (im)possibilities of claiming ‘born-free’ identities at all. Interviews and visual methods including body maps, history lines and narrative lines are utilised in the design of the project to engage narrative identities among participants from three locations in KwaZulu-Natal - a rural, suburban and township school. Participants’ stories illuminate the ways that memory of the socio-political and historical past has become embedded in personal narratives and in the imagination of events that did not occur in the lifetimes of the young people interviewed. In doing so this work goes about answering a line of inquiry that examines the ‘born-free generation’ as characterised by their time and place in xvi the current South African context in relation to memory, identity, and traces of (everyday) trauma observed in their stories. Narrative case studies in the analysis of interactional dynamics and content reveal the need to rearticulate (historical) trauma theory in light of ongoing, systemic violence in the present. The salience of place, race, class, gender and sexuality in young South Africans’ narratives of ongoing, everyday experiences of violence speak to the embeddedness of young people in their time and place and to relationships between self and other that allow them to create pasts and futures out of their experiences in the present. Through the research methodology that shifted the project away from direct talk about historical memory, the findings show that memory and trauma are salient in the lives that young people lead in the present and the ways these lived realities of everyday trauma become integrated and made sense of with respect to imagined pasts and futures, in both what has been remembered and forgotten as young people tell about their lives. This frames the project through a postcolonial lens that prioritises reflections on everyday trauma in young South Africans’ current lives. Such a contribution offers insights for psychological praxis and interdisciplinary work in areas including memory studies, oral history and sociological understandings of the interplay between collectivity and individual meaning making. Key words: Narrative, Psychology, Intergenerational Trauma, Memory, Identity, Born-Free 1 CHAPTER ONE: a HISTORY and an INTRODUCTION Young people, we are often told, hold the hope and promise of new futures. By examining stories told by young South Africans, from different raced, class and geographical backgrounds in KZN, this project enquires into the transmission of intergenerational trauma and memory that is the psychosocial legacy of South Africa’s apartheid history. ‘Rainbow nation’ ideals of non-racial equality may allow young South Africans to psychologically distance themselves from their histories by imagining themselves free from the structural and psychological constraints of apartheid. While young South Africans attempt to forget and build hopeful lives in the present and future free from apartheid we see, instead, how memory and experience/s of racism in the present come to underpin ‘born-free’ stories. Engaging with narratives in this manner allows us to ask if we can meaningfully think of the second generation as ‘born-free’ at all and offers insight into the specific ways that young South Africans navigate their complicated relationship with time after apartheid, sitting ostensibly on the ‘hinge’ (Hoffman, 2004) between generations. This ‘hinge’ points also to the ways the present is connected not only to the past but also to the future, and to how young South Africans navigate meaningful lives in the present with what they know about the past and how they imagine their futures. This navigation lies at the heart of the research where young South Africans from different geographical spaces and from different class, gender and race backgrounds narrate the tenuous ways they ‘live in history’. 1.1 Remembering apartheid Apartheid legislation in South Africa, after its inception in 1948, saw the formalisation of racist practices and policies that draw their roots from colonial and western ideologies that had been the status quo in the region since the arrival of European settlers. In particular ideologies of separation and superiority/inferiority were entrenched in policies and practices related to governance, development, and education among others. Bantustans (separate homelands), inferior ‘Bantu’ education, forced removals, pass laws, influx control, discriminating labour legislation and practices, detention without trial among others were a result of apartheid laws (Simpson, 1993). The ‘exploitative and unjust’ social system of apartheid had its roots in economic and political order and consequences to physiological and psychological well being (Gilman, 1983). In this way apartheid is accepted as a systemic and 2 pervasive ‘structural’ violence beyond the individual interpersonal violence that occured between people (Gilman, 1983, p. 8). The struggle to emancipate South Africa from apartheid was only realised forty-six years later after growing social and economic pressure from within South Africa’s liberation struggle, from exiled activists and beyond to social boycotts and international sanctions. The transition to a fully democratic society where all citizens of South Africa had equal rights to vote and participate in social life was tenuous. However, the 1994 elections and hand over of political control from National Party (NP) under FW De Klerk to the ANC (African National Congress) led by Nelson Mandela was relatively peaceful and was characterised by an optimistic vision for a ‘New South Africa’. Nineteen- ninety four’s elections promised a dream2 of an end to the structural violence and state repression, based primarily on racialised and racist legislation, initiated in 1948. For the many who celebrated the transition to the ‘New South Africa’both within the country and internationally, nineteen-ninety four marked a major turning point from whence no South Africans would again experience racist, structural violence. For those born during or after nineteen-ninety four this would mean a whole life lived ‘free’ from knowing (directly) of the violence of apartheid (the violence of state oppression as well as the more insidious psychological violence of racism). In light of this, the (second-) generation of South Africans born after apartheid were frequently referred to as the 'born-free generation'. 1.2 'Born-free' More than twenty years after the transition to democracy, the generational fissure created between those who experienced apartheid directly and those who were either very young at the time of transition or born thereafter, arouses our imagination as a kind of barometer of how our national 'teenage' freedom is playing out: we ask how those who are 'born-free' experience South Africa (ostensibly) 'free' from the baggage of the past. This generation allows us to measure successes and failures, particularly with regard to socioeconomic 2 The dream is used here deliberately to note the hope for an end to structural violence, state repression and institutionalised racism but, as we will see in the thesis, these become reinscribed in various ways in post- apartheid life. This is the idea encapsulated by Gevisser (2007) as a ‘dream deferred’. 3 transformation but also with regard to more psychosocial questions such as identity development. Researchers such as Fataar (1997), for example, ask: are all young people able to access social services like education and health care or is our society still unequal, stratified by “race,” class, and gender? The question links into broader optimism for the future of a peaceful, non-racial South Africa, with young people straddling vulnerability and healing (Bray, Gooskens, Kahn, Moses and Seekings, 2010). In his 1995 speech on Youth Day, Mandela said "This generation of youth stands at the border-line between the past of oppression and repression, and the future of prosperity, peace and harmony” (cited in Welchen, 2012, p. 14). Young people carry the hopes and anxieties of South Africa's transition with them. In the collective imagination, young South Africans have been born into a world of possibility, free from racist, structural violence and the threat of direct and psychological violation that accompanied the brutal apartheid regime. Young South Africans have opportunities to grow up in a society characterised by open, inclusive public spaces, where they are able to meet, engage with, learn and work with and even be intimate with other South Africans from all backgrounds. Moreover, they have a chance to express their intrinsic interests and skills through pursuing the full spectrum of employment opportunities. These and other opportunities have set this generation up as substantially different to those living under apartheid legislation. And indeed, there is much to celebrate in what has become possible for young South Africans among this generation. Mattes (2012, p. 139) writes that 'born-frees' "confront a totally different world than that of their parents". Access to housing, sanitation, and electrification, as well as welfare and health services were advanced by growth-oriented economic reforms, in particular the management of deficit-reduction post-19943. Technology and news media (both locally from a reformed public broadcaster as well as private or international news channels), uneven but universal education4, along with increasing familiarity with peaceful, democratic processes have given young South Africans access to knowledge and skills to identify with and defend the ideals of democracy and to pursue lives within these ideals 3 The average, annual growth of South Africas economy is 3.3% since 1994 (Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, 2014). 4 See 14.4 below about schooling inequalities in relation to class, race and gender 4 (Mattes, 2012). Increased movement and consumer patterns attributed to young people are evidence of a growing black middle class, where young South Africans demonstrate their freedom to make choices by exercising consumer power (Khunou, 2015) For Nuttall (2009) and Welchen (2012), the growing black middle and elite classes have opened up opportunities for young South Africans not only to participate in consumption practices but have also resulted in new (hybrid) youth cultures that are modelled on global youth norms and shifting patterns of relating to self and other. Mark(et)ed through technologies of mass media and consumer culture, Nuttall (2009) notes the new forms that young people adopt to (re)make or (re)style them-selves, particularly in the urban space/s of inner Johannesburg where young South Africans actively forge out new non-racial identities that are based on 'taste' and consumption rather than ‘race’ identifications (Welchen, 2012). In these urban middle class contexts it is perhaps not surprising to find that many South African youth report being optimistic about the future of the country and their place in it. Non-racial group identifications are forged in the sphere of popular culture, within malls (Welchen, 2012; Nuttal, 2009) and on social media sites. However, increasingly these "pockets of integration, cosmopolitanism and non-racialism" (Welchen, 2012, p. 14) are being challenged as elite as new social movements and activism are finding firm place among the country’s youth, including through movements like #Rhodesmustfall, #Feesmustfall and other protest movements. For the lives of the majority of born-free generation "the recurring echoes of the past are often alarmingly resonant" (Bradbury and Clark, 2012, p. 176). South African society is marked by massive social and economic inequality, as evidenced by statistics which consistently showing Gini coefficients that are unmatched anywhere else in the world. Mattes (2012) remarks upon a picture that is dominated by continuity (or even regression) over change and growth. The yawning gap between rich and poor, and significant levels of unemployment particularly among school leavers suggest that things have remained unchanged or become worse for the majority who have not been able to escape urban townships and rural Bantustans into previously white spaces of education and the middle class. For these young South Africans, everyday life is characterised by dysfunctional and poorly resourced schooling, unemployment, violence at 5 home and in communities, and the scourge of HIV/AIDS that infects and affects them and those around them (Mattes, 2012). The AIDS pandemic underscored the ways that class, race and gender have coalesced in the present context (Hunter, 2010)5. Bradbury and Miller (2010) contend that while these "inequalities of the South African context have, of course, been predominantly defined by ‘race’, [...] ‘race’ has always been, and continues to be, overlaid and underscored by other dimensions of privilege or oppression such as gender, class, and the urban–rural divide" (p. 689). The legacy of apartheid plays out in multi-faceted and nuanced ways in the post-apartheid South Africa through the ways that society is stratified along these unequal lines. Welchen (2012) asks: "how appropriate is it to describe a generation as 'born-free' when both the legacy of the past and the weight of expectation so strongly weigh upon it?" (p. 15). 1.3 Media constructions Born-free is an evocative notion, and it has been frequently used in the media discourse. During the period of this research, young South Africans have dominated the headlines. The research was conducted from 2011 to 2012 and much of the media examples here and literature are read backwards to explain the participants narratives that were already simmering within society at the time of the study. While it does not seem unusual for older generations the world over to be troubled by the question of the next generation, in South Africa the question takes on an edge that says much about the socio-historical context. In this section we look to the ways that young South Africans have featured in news media and been positioned within the legacy of historical time. The media spotlight falls onto rates of unemployment among the youth, the effects of drugs and alcohol, school yard violence perpetrated by young people and violence perpetrated against young people in their homes, schools, places of worship or on the streets, teenage 5 And recently the impact of Covid-19 6 pregnancy, and the extraordinary feats of sporting, cultural, academic and humanitarian efforts of the nation's 'youngest and brightest'. Among these news stories, a number of headlines in the years immediately preceding and during the study, demand attention and offer a way to contextualise the lives of participants. In 2008 the world watched as 'Xenophobia' broke out across South Africa. Displacing hundreds and killing more than 60 people, violence directed mainly at foreign African migrants and some South Africans within townships, first in Alexandria near Johannesburg and then spreading throughout the country, the Xenophobic attacks of 2008 were remarked upon in part because of the involvement of youth. In the film 'Where do I stand' (Blank, 2010) the role of youth as perpetrators, victims and activists during the violence is explored. While the violence was perpetrated by and against individuals of all ages, the involvement of those who were too young to have witnessed apartheid violence put a question mark on explanations which looked to the past to explain this ongoing violence6, which curiously re- presents similar images of fear and violence. In particular, the image of 'the burning man' (Boston.com, 2008) evoked memories of 'necklacing', a method of brutally killing 'traitors' during the height of the apartheid struggle by placing a tyre around an individual's neck and setting it alight. In 2009 at the University of the Free State (UFS), under the new leadership of Professor Jonathan Jansen, media furore was ignited after a video was released showing four white students demeaning black cleaning staff. Following on from his book 'Knowledge in the Blood', written during his time as the first black dean of the University of Pretoria, Jansen used his insight into the nature of transmitted knowledge between generations to understand and manage the incident, contentiously pardoning the white students and working toward greater transformation of the UFS and in particular addressing the race based inclusions and exclusions with the residence spaces (Jansen, 2009). 6 Debates about what can be reasonably expected in the way of change vary, with the then-president of South Afirca, Jacob Zuma stressing that "we can never stop blaming apartheid". 7 In 2010, South Africa staged the Fifa world cup football tournament that offered an unmatched opportunity for citizens to unite around a notion of national identity, sport and diversity. In the two short years since the xenophobic attacks, South Africans from all walks of life were embracing a spirit of togetherness, not only with their fellow citizens but with foreign visitors from around the world and across the African continent in particular. Youth were encouraged and, in some instances, expected to participate in playing soccer in their communities and watching of the games. Young South Africans were often used as the yardstick for the success or failure of the games with regard to development, with different projects (Sports and Recreation South Africa, 2010) springing up to bring sport and sporting facilities into poor communities. Images of new sport fields and of children playing offered heart-warming glimpses of the work being done to accompany the spectacle playing out in brand new stadiums around the country (Boston.com, 2010). In the same year, Julius Malema, the then president of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL), incited controversy by singing the struggle song ‘Dubula iBhunu7’, for which he was taken to court on the grounds that the song constituted hate speech. During his term as President of the Youth League, Malema garnered fierce support and equally fierce criticism, dividing South Africans over issues of race, distribution of wealth, politics and more. By the end of 2011 Malema had been suspended from the ANC for bringing the ruling party into disrepute. His exit from the ANC notwithstanding, Malema made it clear that the role of young people in politics, as leaders and/or as an electorate, hold incredible power. These issues were extended in the political agenda of the subsequently formed Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) which focuses on legacies of racism and economic exclusion. In 2012 a promising young model, Jessica Leandra Dos Santos began to make headlines over a racist tweet. Commenting on an altercation with a man at a local supermarket, Jessica 7 ‘Dubula iBhunu’ literally means Shoot/Kill the Farmer but ‘iBhunu’ also means Afrikaner. This term speaks to the race dynamics set up by the annexation of land for farming under colonialization and the ongoing dominance of white Afrikaans-speaking in the farming sector post-apartheid. 8 ignited anger across the country by indicating that the language and ideas of race and racism perpetuate into the next generation when she used the k-word. Tshidi Thamana, a fellow twitter user and model, and Jessica Dos Santos met in a show of racial unity after Tshidi responded to Jessica's initial tweet with a racially directed tweet of her own. This meeting was encouraged by the Democratic Alliance (DA) as a token of absolution in the face of massive public anger. While the two models reached an agreement with the South African Human Rights Commission regarding charges of hate speech, technological advances (in this case social networking sites) have opened up the more personal and private expressions of racism among young South Africans (we are reminded of the Reitz video) and the resultant emotions that this sparks when these are shared in the public realm. 2012 was also a year the state of education was thrown into the spotlight. Early in the year Mampela Ramphele declared that South Africa's education system is worse today than the 'gutter education' the country had under the apartheid government (Mail and Guardian, 2012). Her distress at the state of government education was to be prophetic as the release of math and science performances were to reveal that South Africans were performing even worse than poorer developing nations placing second to last (Evans, 2013). More, the failure to deliver textbooks to parts of the Limpopo province, meant that many learners were without study aids for the majority of the school year. For all the gains achieved after the end of apartheid, questions in the media persist regarding the standards of education that young South Africans are receiving. In early 2013 First National Bank (FNB) launched an advertisement campaign linked to a series of interviews with young South Africans available on their web page. While the television advert was scripted or a composite of ideas taken from the interviews, FNB sought to represent the views of idea coming from young South Africans regarding the (ongoing) difficulties of life in poor communities and the need for social change8. It is important to remember that first and foremost FNB is a business using this marketing to encourage South 8The advert is now only available on Youtube (Youtube, 2013) 9 Africans (probably targeting the youth specifically) to make use of their services. It is then of little surprise that when labelled as 'treasonous' by the ANC the brand quickly withdrew the advertising under threat of losing big business. Regardless of the debate raised and controversy surrounding this campaign, the foregrounding and then censoring of the views of young South Africans is noteworthy. At about the same time as the controversy raised by the FNB advertisements, the media were also reporting on the Anene Booysen rape and murder. Shocked, saddened and infuriated by the death of seventeen year old Anene Booysen after being gang-raped, reportedly by two young men barely out their teenage years themselves, communities within the Western Cape and across the country rose in solidarity with Anene's family and other rape victims, survivors and their families. This event was a touchstone in a context of widespread gender-based violence and femicide, and in no way an isolated case involving young victims and perpetrators. At the climax of twenty years of freedom, youth remained in the news. 2014 saw a revival of racism on the UFS campus/es after a race motivated attack made the headlines. Almost simultaneously, students at the North West University’s (NWU) Potchefstroom campus drew attention for the use of the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute during student initiations. As spaces for young people to collect, share experiences and express themselves, universities are sites that reflect particular institutional cultures and what is happening outside of and beyond the university microcosm. From 20159 (which one could metaphorically call the post-adolescence or emerging adulthood of democracy in South Africa) racism, violence and the need to address legacies of the past have played out in the media as young South Africans continue to dominate headlines. Amongst these the ‘Rhodes must fall’ movement (coupled with Open 9 See earlier reference to the time of the interviews which implicate the participants of the project in later movements. ? 10 Stellenbosch, George must fall, and Fees must fall) as well as ongoing youth participation in xenophobia stand out. In Healy-Clancy’s (2017) historiography of student protests, we see that the decolonial student project and call for greater educational access, which formed the pivot of this latest round of student movements, are tied to “questions that arose out of daily struggles around issues of race, gender, sexuality and class” (p. 1). These questions speak across time to the struggles of students under apartheid as they do to students today. It is important that ‘student politics’ at high schools and universities should be driven by everyday politics of race, gender and sexuality and by students and teachers who worked against the grain in big and small ways. While the media tends to focus on big moments, the small acts of resistance that have characterised education since 1948 allows us to examine the impact of history for individual narratives. Wells (2017) writes that “it could be that a wave of violent student unrest from 2015 to 2016 provided the impetus to bring public history more to the forefront in South Africa’s thinking about how to use its troubled past” (p. 1). In doing so, we move the lens of history away from the ‘major players’ and political actors who feature in history books, to the everyday decisions of all (Healy-Clancy, 2017). It is thus a key touchstone that a focus on youth in the media is evidently connected to ideas of race, violence, politics, education and ultimately (im)possibilities of redress from a violent, apartheid past. The media's (and one may appropriately infer also the general public's) interest in young people is directed at this generation precisely because they are 'born-free'. This idea is captured in Wale’s (2017) investigation into the ‘trauma-drama’of rhetoric and discourses after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). By tracing the impact of TRC narratives across time, Wale (2017) recognises the shadow of trauma that has become embedded in stories and linguistic and cultural spaces carried forward by survivors and their children. It is not so much that these stories are about youth per se but rather they get us to think about the (dis)continuities with our (particularly, racist) past. The ways in which historical events and processes come back to ‘haunt’ us in new ways, gain a new life, are re-imagined or re- exercised in relation to new conflicts and social demands. The (theoretical) idea of ‘hauntings’ or ‘ghosts’ (Mamphele, 2008) in contemporary social theory allows us to think 11 about what we mean when we talk about ‘the legacy of apartheid’. In light of how young people have been presented and imagined in media discourse, this notion is resuscitated and takes on a new life in a new context and demonstrates how the meanings of particular political rhetoric and action is distorted when severed from its moorings. The Molly Blank film ‘Where do I stand’ about Xenophobic violence is a vivid example of this: young (black) people re-enacting protest action of the past on relation to foreign Africans without really ‘meaning’ it as they themselves say when interviewed after the fact. Moreover, the relationship between young people and everyday violence in the present is salient. That young people experience or enact violence in their own lives is crucial to the ways that legacies and stories of apartheid can be framed and understood. 1.4 Research Focus This project expands on the narratives that young people construct for themselves about the past, present and future. The study, located in KwaZulu-Natal, explored memory- and knowledge- making for young people in relation to their present experiences. Youth are a compelling subject of study, particularly for the ways as they represent a key ‘generational cleavage’ in South Africa (Durham, 2000, p. 113), Hoffman’s (2004) pivotal ‘hinge generation’. Moreover, Durham (2000) sees studies on youth as able to provide insight into broader social phenomena, allowing us to access all areas of social and personal experience including “power and agency; public, national, and domestic spaces and identities and their articulation and disjunctures; memory, history, and sense of change; globalization and governance; gender and class” (p. 113). This generational fissure point, means that those who constitute ‘youth’, as a category, are a necessary and important resource to capture these processes in contemporary South Africa. It is this fissure which also contains the project within the hinge of an apartheid time span, between two living generations. My interest in ‘youth’ is however, not in ‘youth’ or ‘youth identity’ per se but about this entry point into talking about and thinking about memory, which is both personal and political, individual and collective. This research used narrative interviews and visual methologies, which allow participants to reflect on and make sense of their lives through the stories they told about the past, present and future imaginings. 12 This research project focused on understanding the stories young South Africans tell of their lives. The project questions the ways young South Africans know and make sense of stories of the past, as well as the specific configurations of this knowledge in their personal narratives. These questions are pinned against narratives of lives in the present and expectations of the future. Enquiring into the ways young South Africans make sense of a history that they did not experience 'in their own lifetimes', this thesis builds on the questions Jansen (2009) tackles in his book when he asks about the transmission and effects of received/indirect knowledge for those who did not witness to or directly experience the events that shaped our history. The (ghostly) re-inscriptions of the past that are of particular interest in this project require that we ask: How and why does the past matter for those who come after? And, does the past matter at all in the face of everyday, ongoing violence? By looking at stories told by adolescents in different geographical locations around KwaZulu- Natal (a province on the eastern coastline of South Africa): urban, township and rural communities, this research explores what and how young people know about an apartheid past and how this ‘knowledge’ is articulated in different contexts in the present. Cut through by gender, race and class divisions, their stories offer insight into the specific histories and realities of their different communities as well as the politics and psychology of second generation memory more broadly. 13 Figure 1: Maps showing research sites in Kwa-Zulu-Natal, South Africa. Situated at three sites across Kwazulu-Natal, as indicated in Figure 1, the research explores how stories of the past become incorporated into the personal narratives of young South Africans, to be celebrated, ignored or escaped from. In particular we explore how the next generation attempt to overcome social and psychological legacies of violence and trauma. Bringing together theories on memory, psychology and (intergenerational) trauma, this thesis explores the ways young South Africans narrate an indirect knowledge of an apartheid past as they try to navigate their present and future. Participants’ stories will illuminate the ways that memory of socio-political and historical change has taken the form of a number of ‘myths’ in the imagination of events that did not occur in the lifetimes of the young people interviewed. The project grew out of a previously enquiry by the researcher (Frankish, 2009) where (grand)parents were asked about what stories about the past they share with the next generation (Frankish and Bradbury, 2012). This earlier study and subsequent paper led to 14 findings related to ongoing trauma and silence amongst the ‘older’ generation. These findings sparked questions pertaining to what and how young South Africans incorporate (traumatic and silenced) Apartheid memory in their ongoing life narratives. Moreover, a pilot study conducted before the commencement of data collection drew epistemological and methodological limits around what young South Africans know and how they can speak (See appendix 10, page 339). This meant that the epistemological questions of what young people know were also already framed by what could and could not be said and to whom. To answer these questions the work looks to history and memory, and using narrative and identity theory, to examine the long-term implications of apartheid, particularly for the identities of the post-apartheid generation, the youth. Chapter Two and Three offer a review of the literature pertaining to three pertinent theoretical directions: memory, trauma and narrative. Each of these theoretical directions represent privileged lines of engagement with the question of the second-generation. As we will see in the discussion of each there is room for individual critique of the theoretical contributions and for integration to contribute to the body of literature presented as a holistic argument. Chapter Four presents the project methodology and is followed by three chapters analysing the data from participants. The narratives of the young South Africans who participated in this project, are analysed first for the form or structure of narrative cases looking at the ways that what was said (and even what remained ‘unsaid’) was complicated by choices of form including the ‘interactional dynamics’ of research (Chapter Five). Second, an analysis of the content of the stories presented in individual cases (Chapter Six). Third, the project turns to an analysis of the thematic content of the narratives (Chapter Seven). These analyses culminate in a discussion in Chapter Eight that draws together the theoretical and analytic threads into a narrative about the second generation. In doing so, this work goes about answering a line of inquiry that examines the ‘born-free generation’ as articulated in their time and place in the current South African context in relation to memory, identity, and (everyday) trauma traces observed in their stories. Findings from this study of the second-generation after historical horror in South Africa lead us to question whether what separates them from their parents and the longer past is the way they narrate their place in time. Concerns about everyday violence in the present are pinned against knowledge of the past and hopes for the future, making new possibilities for narrating self and other (im)possible. 15 The study focuses on the transmission of intergenerational trauma in the ways that young South Africans remember conflictual histories. This focus is necessarily shaped and informed by narrative identity work that offers a route into the forms that second generation memory takes in South Africa after Apartheid. It is therefore a key finding and contribution of the study that narrative theory and method is a vital instrument for thinking about the transmission of stories between generations and for making sense of what cannot be said in a context of historical trauma and everyday violence. Such a contribution offers insights for psychological praxis and interdisciplinary work in areas including memory studies, oral history and sociological understandings of the interplay between collectivity and individual meaning making. Lessons drawn from the research methodology, and necessitated by participants’ engagement, shifted the project away from direct talk about historical memory. Participants’ narratives demanded an understanding of how memory and trauma are embedded in the lives that young people lead in the present and the ways these lived realities of everyday trauma become integrated and made sense of with respect to imagined pasts and futures. This happens in both what has been remembered and forgotten as young people tell about their lives. This frames the project through a postcolonial lens that prioritises reflections on everyday trauma in young South Africans current lives. 16 CHAPTER TWO: MEMORY, TRAUMA and EVERYDAY VIOLENCE In this chapter we look at understanding how people remember conflictual histories and how these impact on the present. Memory and trauma studies are the theoretical underpinnings for much of the literature that explains how people make sense of violence and how they transmit experiences through cultural and familial traces across generations. By looking at memory and trauma the project sought to understand the ways that vicarious and intergenerational trauma shape the experiences of young South Africans. In particular the role of storytelling or silence in families is unpacked to think about the narrative (im)possibilities, re-articulations and distortions that allow young South Africans to know about apartheid and construct narratives of their own lives within the framework of their own experiences of ‘everyday trauma’ (see chapter one) and in relation to ongoing, postcolonial relationships with self and other. The TRC was established in the Preamble of the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act (1995) at the birth of a democratic South Africa. Led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the TRC held public hearings with witnesses to and victims of ‘gross human rights violations’ under apartheid in South Africa. By allowing perpetrators to also give testimony and request amnesty from civil and criminal prosecution, the TRC also sough to act as a kind of restorative justice body. Both victims and perpetrators were motivated by the goal of transcending collective violence through the TRC. In this way, the TRC was tied into religious ideas of confession in its work to facilitate forgiveness and healing (Motsemme, 2004). By sharing their pain on the world stage (Andrews, 2007), the promise of the TRC was that individual stories would allow for collective memory, healing and nation building (Motsemme, 2004), underpinned by the rhetoric of ‘the rainbow nation’. Credited to Archbishop Desmond Tutu the term ‘rainbow nation’ is a version of his ‘Rainbow people of God’ quoted from his speech upon presenting the TRC report to parliament (Tutu, 1998). In it Tutu calls for ‘Never again! Nooit weer nie! Ngeke futhi! Ga reno tlola!’ (Tutu, 1998). The theme of ‘never again’ (first attributed to the Soviet troops liberating Auschwitz 17 after the second world war10) has permeated the lexicon of politics and social arenas by generating demands for memory in response to mass atrocity, starting with the Holocaust, and extending to (among others) apartheid and the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda (Brandsetter, 2010). Nelson Mandela in his Inaugural lecture in 1994 stressed: “Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land [South Africa] will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world”. The ‘never again’ slogan emphasises the importance of remembering and never forgetting the past in order for it not to be repeated but of course it may not be repeated in the same way. Desmond Tutu, in his introduction to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report (1998), notes the importance of such learning from the past for both the present and the future, of crossing the boundaries from old lies into new truths, from the country of the past to the country of the future. The common kernel connecting national identity construction projects after apartheid, and initiated with the healing processes of the TRC during Mandela’s presidency, is a need to “forge a nation better than and different” from that which came before (Baker and Muller, 2010, p.49). While each subsequent presidency in South Africa has brought a divergent slant to these processes, they remain faithful to the work of adding to the archives and celebrating lessons, memories, values and heroes of the struggle against apartheid (Bakker and Muller, 2010). Gqola (2010) writes that for South Africans “27 April 1994 was an invitation to envision ourselves differently than we had up until that point” (p. 2). From this perspective, the lessons of the past lie in firstly, remembering and rewriting the truth of the events, and secondly, generating new ways of being (for South Africa, largely based on conciliatory and non-racial principles). 10 This phrase has more recently beein reincarnated as a hashtag to speak to school shootings in the USA. 18 These twin goals of remembering and constituting the past in the present are evident in the plethora of new heritage sites, commemorative places, museums and statues that have sprung up and which offer the historical value of ‘telling the other side of the story’, of revealing misrepresented, suppressed and silenced stories and of offering a new basis for imagining the self and other across time (Marschall, 2010). These public memorialisations have drawn significant academic, political and public interest (Marschall, 2010). Memory sites, both physical (including new statues and memorials etc) and symbolic (such as the TRC) serve to “induce purposeful remembrance in the interests of forging a particular historical consciousness and shaping collective memory upon which group identity can be based” (Marschall, 2010, p. 2). It is taken as a given that those who experienced apartheid directly will naturally remember it. This presumes that the events of apartheid would inevitably and indelibly be marked in the memories of those who lived through them11. More, the directionality of remembering is forward-looking. We remember the past so that we can do better and be better in the future. Such forward-looking would by presumption always include the next-generation/s. 2.1 Memory The study of memory is a burgeoning area of interest within and across various social science disciplines including history, historical geography, sociology, psychology, folklore, museum and communication studies (Neves, 2003) and beyond, including public culture and contemporary politics (Argenti and Schramm, 2012). This “flurry of activity in the field of public memory” over the last thirty years (Marschall, 2010, p. 3) points to debate within academia regarding what constitutes memory. Changing definitions and conceptualisations of memory, remembrance, commemoration and antonyms including forgetting, obliteration, oblivion or silence reveal struggles to define memory studies (Argenti and Schramm, 2012). Definitions of memory and memory processes vary depending on disciplinary interests and between the different contexts of its use. While some focus on memory as a tool for 11 This presumption sits uneasily with traumatic forgetting. 19 individuals or societies to recall, store and retrieve information about events and experiences across time, others focus on the fallibility of memory that is open to suggestion and manipulation, including false memories (Loftus, 2012). Still others consider how memory plays a role in individual and social healing and the (re-)creation of identity, particularly after violence and trauma (van der Merwe and Gobodo-Madikizela, 2008). Broadly it is accepted that memory is "not a simple, unmediated reproduction of the past, but rather a selective re- creation that is dependent for its meaning on the remembering individual or community's contemporary social context, beliefs and aspirations" (Argenti and Schramm, 2012, p. 2). What is remembered and how, is invested with cultural, social and political interest. Positioning memory in this way, distinguishes it from a computer model of memory that sees recording, retrieval and storage as the main tasks of memory, making these processes more akin to the functions of history or historiography. Gqola (2010, p. 8) writes: “memory is a shadow always hovering and governing our relationship to the present and future. History is the art of recording and analysing this consciousness of the past. Memory resists erasure and is important for the symbols through which each community invents itself. It requires a higher, more fraught level of activity to the past than simply identifying and recording it”. The art of re-member-ing (of calling out of the ether a sense of an embodied, real experience) makes the past present (Prager, 2012). “In other words, memory resists the tenet of much academic history that the past is complete and in need of analysis, contextualisation and explanation because in order to use the past in their daily lives people must create and recreate open-endedness in their experiences” (Gqola, 2010, pp. 9 and 10). In a discussion about how we remember traumatic events, we need to consider a variety of features of memory. The first of these, while seemingly obvious should not be taken for granted, are the processes of remembering and forgetting. What do we remember and what do we forget? Second, we look at trauma as a ‘memory affliction’ and a consequence of violence in the present (Prager, 2012). In this view, trauma reveals the presence of the past in the present (Birth, 2006). Third, we turn to discuss the ongoing legacy of violence and trauma among the next generation. How are cycles of disruptiveness passed from those who experienced violence to their children and grandchildren, the generations that follow? In a 20 sense this chapter follows a chronological approach: past, present, future. How are conflictual histories/events experienced, remembered and transmitted across time12? Post-apartheid South Africa is an interesting case study into the workings of memory after large scale socio-political conflict. How are South Africans making sense of and remembering their past? How are these memories activated and utilised in the present? That memory might play out in relation to a violent past or to trauma (as suggested also by Argenti and Schramm, 2012, above) is important. While it is important to retain the distinctions between these two concepts, one can also meaningfully ask how they interact with each other, particularly in contexts where one is compelled to engage with the (long-term) effects of violence. Argenti and Schramm (2012) ask: "How does violence affect remembering?” (p. 1). By navigating the relationship between remembering and forgetting. Argenti and Schramm (2012) trouble the Faustian bargain that allows individuals and societies to manage conflictual histories. In doing so the question of collective, social and post-memory remains: If violence asks you to forget, what memory is available for the next generation by which to give life meaning? Or how do they process histories and collective memories of violence? The question of how individuals or societies remember violence is not inconsequential. We are reminded in many spaces that ‘those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it’. While this has become somewhat of a cliché, there is merit in thinking about and interrogating quite seriously the consequences of historical violence, legacies which can persist many decades after the events and the possibilities of (unremembered) past violence begetting violence in the present. Within South Africa, the large scale project of 'never forgetting' (introduced in the preceding chapter) has resulted in a plethora of spaces and places for talking about and engaging with (or ‘remembering’) the history of apartheid. Most notable remains the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, initiated in 1998 to address large-scale human rights abuses that 12 While the chapter follows a chronological order, the literature and data show intersections between past and present that cannot be neatly disentangled. This entanglement shows how the past is present; how the present evokes the past; how some things are remembered and others forgotten. These entanglements will be unravelled as a part of the project. 21 occurred under Apartheid and which offered South Africans from all walks of life a chance to tell their stories. Narrative, testimonial and archival projects, including the apartheid archives project at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, capture and record “stories and narrative accounts from ordinary South Africans, about their experiences of racism during apartheid” (Stevens, Duncan and Hooks, 2013, p. 7). More, the development of new heritage sites, commemorative places, museums, monuments and statues, which intend either to correct previously misrepresented history, or to present previously silent or silenced history (Marschall, 2005; Marschall, 2010). Memory projects of these and other kinds serve “to induce purposeful remembrance in the interests of forging a particular historical consciousness and shaping collective memory upon which group identity can be based” (Marschall, 2010, p. 2). These forms of historical consciousness and/or collective memory seem to be directed especially at those who did not experience the events to which this history speaks directly, the younger generation, outsiders and (foreign) tourists (Marschall, 2010). Equally clichéd is the notion that his-story is written by the victor. In telling the stories of the past and remembering what happened under apartheid it is worth interrogating “of what are these memories? Whose memory is it?” (Ricoeur, 2004, p. 3, italics in original). In doing so we recognise that as a presence of the past in the present, memory does a particular kind of work to recall what is important at a particular time and place, and of forgetting which is less important or too painful. ‘Never forgetting’ does not mean remembering every minutae of life in South Africa and may in fact exclude a vast range of experiences within South African history, including, among others, colonial and slave memory (Gqola, 2010), gendered violences and the experiences of women under colonialism and apartheid (Ross, 2001) and for many the list also includes violences perpetrated by white South Africans conscripted into military and police forces (Wildschut, 2014; Steyn, 2012a) as well as privileges accrued through racist segregation and possibilities for ‘real’ reparations13. These silences coincide with the project of remembering – where in South Africa, what is remembered is often 13 Policies geared toward redistribution of wealth have not significantly altered class inequalities, where a yawning divide between the rich and poor still bears the legacy of apartheid so that biology is still destiny in South Africa – especially where race, poverty and gender discrimination meet. 22 violence perpetrated against the many (almost exclusively, black) victims of apartheid14. That silence and memory coincide is important, and demands that we interrogate the specifics of the processes of remembering and forgetting. In psychology, memory has long been understood using a computer model. While the details of memory processes are highly specialised to talk about how memories are organised, encoded, stored and retrieved through the conversion of sensory information into short-term and long-term memory (Coon and Mitterer, 2010), it is clear that forgetting is an unfortunate by-product of memory processes gone wrong. Forgetting is a result of decay, disuse, interference and/or repression among other such failures (Coon and Mitterer, 2010). For psychologists following this model, remembering is privileged. This privileging of recollection or remembering in traditional psychological approaches is likened to a hero and villain of a play where memory is the star and forgetting lurks in the shadows ready to steal the show (Brockmeier, 2002). The drama is a cat and mouse game of protecting or stealing the proverbial cheese. In a clear sense this drama and the conflict that it creates is a struggle for ‘truth’ (Brockmeier, 2002) and the dangers of losing touch on what is real. This emphasis on the struggle for remembering and truth in psychological theory on memory holds for a broader debate on cultural memory where commemorating is privileged as virtuous and forgetting is necessarily a failing (Connerton, 2008). Commemorating apartheid, much like the catharsis posited of recalling repressed memories in psychotherapy, is held up as noble and healthy, in the pursuit of full disclosure and healing. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa, referred to many times already, is perhaps the most obvious example of engaging with collective and individual trauma and memories of apartheid. Individuals before the commission gave testimony and witness to gross human rights abuses under the apartheid regime, by narrating individual stories of past experiences and past abuses. Narrative and memory are ideologically linked 14 What is remembered and how is telling of the different subject positions between speakers – such as the competing narratives told at the TRC by victims and perpetrators. 23 through the recalling of traumatic events at the TRC offering a different model to the ‘talking cure’ posited by psychologists. Van der Merwe and Godobo-Madikizela (2008) note that such individual narration hold promise for individual healing, but the commission also sought to redress the violent past of a racially (and economically) divided country by creating a meta-narrative of reconciliation under the rubric of ‘the new South Africa’ and ‘the rainbow nation’ (Frankish, 2009). ‘Telling one’s story’ at the TRC provided opportunities and spaces where national and individual healing could be facilitated, underpinned by deliberate connections with and to cathartic and psychoanalytic processes of the ‘talking cure’, Christian notions of ‘confession’ and African communal forms of ‘taking responsibility’ (Motsemme, 2004). Whichever version is most salient at any given time, each of them proposes that remembering and telling stories of violence offers healing and/or other positive social outcomes, including reconciliation and forgiveness. Desmond Tutu makes this link very directly when he notes that forgiveness requires remembering and truth-telling (Tutu, 1998). Reconciliation in this model strains against the possibilities for pain, trauma and violence that may result from people telling their stories (Tutu, 1998). This model of reconciliation or national healing is not the only one. At other times and other places, models for addressing violence and social upheaval have been very different to the one adopted by South Africa after apartheid. Most notably, the Nuremburg trials after the fall of Germany in World War II took a punitive approach where perpetrators of violence (some of the worst in the modern world) were held responsible for their actions, tried and, when found guilty, subject to the death penalty or extensive terms in prison. In judicial terms, the Nuremburg trials followed the full legal process. International criminal law and the International Criminal Court are a legacy of the Nuremburg trials and continue to play a role in conflict alleviation. In Latin America, the pendulum between justice (as understood in purely legal terms) and reconciliation (fundamentally a spiritual or religious endeavour) swung the other way. Unlike the Nuremburg trials of almost half a century earlier, perpetrators were absolved of their crimes and given the chance to confess and reconcile with those they had wronged. The model offers amnesty so as to avoid the social amnesia encountered in the Nuremburg model (where the incentive is always to avoid prosecution and thus to avoid confessions of any 24 kind). Talking once more is positioned as socially cathartic, but without any measure of justice the inequalities developed during wars and social upheaval continued to bear on individuals. The South African model strikes a balance between the two binaries of justice and reconciliation. While each of these models has been celebrated and criticised for various reasons each looks to capture, understand and address the events of the past within a specific context. One could say, their work is fundamentally to remember the past, is memory work. In this context, recalling past violence resonate with the privileging of remembering in psychology. Individuals are encouraged to give testimony and those who remain silent or who forget (sometimes deliberately) risk losing ground regarding individual and social reconciliation, healing and nation building. However, as we have already noted, memory is fallible and political. What we remember and forget is related to our capacity to hold large volumes of information simultaneously, open to manipulation, connected into geo-political and historical demands to remember some things over others, or memory located in time and space, including the body. In numerous publications, Loftus, sometimes collaborating with colleagues and students, reports on the unreliability and even malleability of memory. Loftus’ work throws light on memory and forgetting as qualitatively distinct from the model presented by treating memory with a computer-like or storehouse model where capacity to remember is privileged (Loftus and Loftus, 1980). Here it is not just how much one remembers but also what they remember and for what purpose. Put another way, Loftus’ work inspires us to inquire into the quality as opposed to the quantity of memory. A result of work that provokes such a distinction reflects on a dyad in memory-work. On the one hand, there is an approach to memory which adopts a store-house like or archival model of memory. On the other hand, is an approach which sees memory as dynamic, political and ‘re-constructivist’ (Campbell, 2003; Sutton, 1998). 25 2.2 Political, social and collective memory Clearly, when thinking solely about capacity, memory is seen as an important storehouse that is plundered by forgetting. But it is clearly not enough to concern ourselves with thinking about how much people remember and not helpful in relation to the focus of this project. Loftus (2012) has already revealed that there are other questions to ask about memory, such as what they remember and why? Perhaps there are other questions still? Like who remembers what? How is it that memories shift over time? Whose memories are right? Do individual memories challenge or support the status quo? These questions link us to thinking about ‘collective’ memory. The suggestion is that memory is situated in time and place and connected into the present political and social moment. In his key text ‘On Collective Memory’, Halbwachs (1992) suggests that it may be unhelpful to think of memory that is not social in nature and that even personal memories exist ‘in society’ (originating from and supported by social frameworks), and out of present interests. Such a social framework to memory suggests that individual memories draw on broader, social patterns which suggest what should be remembered and how, so that in effect we need to speak of collective memories even when referring to private events in the life. Halbwachs (1992) writes that “no memory is possible outside frameworks used by people living in society to determine and retrieve their recollections” (p. 43) and that “…society from time to time obligates people not just to reproduce in thought previous events in their lives, but also to touch them up, to shorten them, or to complete them so that, however convinced we are that our memories are exact, we give them prestige that reality did not possess” (p. 51). While the earlier notion of the manipulation of memory speaks to a deliberate, conspiratorial alteration of memory for deliberate purposes – say the avoidance of chocolate cake or the possibility of prosecuting (alleged) abusers - Halbwachs (1992) suggests that what I have termed geo-political and socio-historical memory is characteristic of a ‘living history’ or ‘living memory’ that is continuous in the present and which is moulded by the collective or ‘society’ rather than a single authority. Halbwachs (1992) addresses history and politics in memory by stressing that society makes of the past what it does, in relation to present circumstances, conventions and needs - which are in any case always in flux, never static. What we remember can and does change. An individual may remember something in the 26 present which was unavailable (forgotten) to them a moment ago, and which in another moment may be forgotten again. According to Halbwachs (1992) this is indicative of ‘collective memory’ where it is not a patchy connection or loose wires in a computer-like model of forgetting that account for the fluidity of memory. Memories are alive and react to demands from and circumstances in the present. An individual ‘agrees’ to a version of the past based on present, collective frameworks and which come to have very real effects on what people can be/come and what they can do. By exploring seven types of forgetting, Connerton (2008) is able to suggest ways that the (present, collective, one may say political act) of forgetting might similarly be understood as more complex and diverse and, ultimately, entangled with memory. The seven types of forgetting include: 1. Repressive erasure 2. Prescriptive forgetting 3. Forgetting that is constitutive in the formation of a new identity (p. 62) 4. Structural amnesia 5. Forgetting as annulment 6. Forgetting as planned obsolescence 7. Forgetting as humiliated silence (Connerton, 2008, pp. 60 - 67). Focusing on ‘[f]orgetting as constitutive in the formation of a new identity’ we can see how the project of memory in South Africa might simultaneously and necessarily be a project of forgetting. Connerton (2008) writes that by acknowledging ‘a negative significance’ from such loss we shift how forgetting is understood. Loss might in this instance ‘construct’ rather than decay memories and therefore serve current (identity) purposes. Connerton’s (2008) theorising of memory in this way means that forgetting is neither a unitary phenomenon nor self-evidently always a failing. Rather, under conditions of forging new identities, forgetting may allow for gains that are obscured by a focus on the losses of memory (Connerton, 2008). Brockmeier (2002) contends that memory (and autobiographical memory specifically) is necessarily about forgetting, writing that a complete autobiographical memory, with no forgotten detail “would be like drawing a map of the world in the ratio of one to one” (Brockmeier, 2002, p. 22). For Brockmeier (2002) it is then clear that memory practices (both remembering and forgetting) are narrative practices. As narratives, memories talk to processes of meaning rather than truth by selecting and emplotting events retroactively 27 (Argenti and Schramm, 2012). This narrative character distinguishes memory in the interests of identity from versions that value capacity and ‘truth’. 2.3 Memory in spaces, places and bodies Halbwachs (1992) and Connerton (2008) locate memory in ‘society’ - a space inhabited by the collective rather than an authority. While they acknowledge history and politics in creating the conditions for memory in the present, it is difficult to pin down memory to fix it and unpack it. So, while they allow us to broaden our questions and explanations of memory, one final question remains: where is memory? The answer that theorists provide may be equally unhelpful in targeting a specific location, but offer insight into ways that we remember (violence) and how it might meaningfully be approached (in some cases literally approached as a physical place or embodied person). Taken in turn, we will look first at memory located in space and place, and then embodied memory. 2.3.1 Space and place The list of commemorative monuments, memorials and public statuary commissioned after and/or to mark apartheid in South Africa is extensive: the apartheid museum in Johannesburg, Heritage tours along Vilakazi street in Soweto or to Robben island, a statue of Nelson Mandela installed at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, arms outstretched to welcome the world. Pilgrims, tourists and children from across the globe commemorate the struggle in South Africa for democracy with outward journeys that signify and mark desired inward journeys toward remembering, making sense of and/or healing from the past. Building on the notion that the past is present and alive as suggested by Halbwachs (1992), Morris-Suzuki (2005) shows us that heritage journeys to deal with the presence of the past in the present may be unnecessary as ‘traces’ of the past can be found all around us (one may even suggest that heritage journeys are the domain of tourism and support various economies of tourism). Our lives play out against (or ‘enmeshed’ with) structures, ideas, institutions etc that predated us and which carry history and memory into the present (Morris-Suzuki, 2005). 28 This idea is reinforced by Seeberg, Levin and Lenz (2012) with their concept of ‘elephants in the room’ referencing the unacknowledged presence of the past. This idea is supported by Birth (2006) who contends that the past is ‘immanent’ and that its presence in the present may take many forms including memories, texts, ruins and monuments. In this sense he argues that people are confronted with traces of the past which demand narrativisation and have powerful implications for present subjectivities. This past is not infinitely flexible and so Birth (2006) notes the limits of this narrativisation, suggesting that the past is not simply an ‘imaginative reconstruction’. Birth (2006) contends that “any view of the past in the present cannot be limited by an assumption that the past only serves present needs or is only a creation of present interests. This deprives the past of its potentially uncanny, disruptive, and contested presence” (p. 180). Critically, he thus suggests that remembering is not merely a means to (re)present the past but a response to the presence of the past and in this way shifts thinking about encodings of the past as merely objects or remnants, toward considering their relations in creating what he terms a ‘phenomenological presence of the past’ (Birth, 2006). These vestiges of the past are, however, only given significance in light of present and cultural investment in them (Birth, 2006). Pierre Nora’s volumes on lieux de mémoire supports the idea that places become invested with the presence of the past in the present. By identifying, classifying and analysing ‘sites of memory’, Nora (1989 and elsewhere) shows how objects of memory become invested with enduring, emotional and symbolic signification so that they become subjects of memory. Museums, archives, monuments, symbols, events, even people can be read as such sites or subjects of memory. For Nora (1989), such investment in ‘place memory’ is specific to our socio-historical moment in time (or at the very least France’s current moment) where the need to represent memory in place reflects a decay in ‘real’, lived memory, what he terms ‘milieu de mémoire’. In distinguishing between ‘site of memory’ (lieux de mémoire) and ‘environments of memory’ (milieu de mémoire), Nora (1989) is provoking a deeper discussion on the nature of memory and history. Memory is not synonymous with history. Memory is spontaneous, constitutive and difficult to contain – not least because it is perpetually evolving as the passage of the present into the past grows and shapes new 29 ‘memories’ (Nora, 1989). Grasping memory is therefore a slippery enterprise. Much like language studies which face constantly evolving rules and content and living languages adapt and merge to change to meet demands and fashions in the present – in the way slang words for example become incorporated into everyday talk. History, unlike memory, attempts to fix the past into a consistent and acceptable version. In this way it is always a reconstruction which is ‘problematic and incomplete’, where: “at the heart of history is a critical discourse that is antithetical to spontaneous memory. History is perpetually suspicious of memory, and its true mission is to suppress and destroy it” (Nora, 1989, p. 8 - 9). For Nora (1989) this distinction refocuses attention on lived memory over static memory consumed (deliberately consumed) through heritage and tourism projects. This means teasing out the processes of signification and their role, while also looking for local, communal memory invested in practices and rituals that make up the everyday lives of individuals. To focus on the stories told around the fire, or while making food, over the kind hung up in museums and picture galleries for example. Winter (1997) writes: “Today's grandparents were children after the 1914-18 war, and their stories--family stories--are now the stuff of history, and exhibitions, and museums, and pilgrimage, all the stuff of ritual Nora considers as signs of a loss of "true" collective memory. The linkage between the young and the old is so central to the concept of memory that it is surprising that Nora does not simply urge us to leave our libraries and simply look around, at our own families, at our own milieu de mémoire still so firmly rooted in family life, however unconventionally lived it may be” (pp. 2 – 3). This change in focus allows us to question, as Marschall (2008) does, what it means that the past is always understood from the perspective of the present. Marschall (2008) reminds and cautions us that “one can manipulate the younger generation’s experience of the present by influencing its knowledge and perception of the past” (Marschall, 2008, p. 116). 30 2.3.2 Ghosts and Haunting Following from the notion that the past is present, the theorizing of ghosts and haunting are key pivots for thinking about the ways that past events continue into the present. This work draws heavily from Derrida’s conceptualisations of spectrality and mourning (Craps, 2010). In this conceptual frame Derrida explodes the neat distinction between the living and the dead and the past and the present (Craps, 2010). This version of hauntology aligns with “major achievements of psychoanalytic and cultural theories of subjectivity over the last few decades can be outlined in terms of the development of new frameworks that understand the subject as collectively constituted” (Rahimi, 2015, p. 40). Such frameworks dislodge the subjective experience from its temporal moorings to answer questions about the intergenerational transmission of affect that would not be possible otherwise (Rahimi, 2015). Rahimi (2015, p. 43) notes that: “For Derrida, on the other hand, a text, a life narrative, an identity, is always already haunted, with no hope for a final interpretation or decryption. This is the sense in which hauntology is a theory of text as such, a theory of reading rather than one of readability. For Derrida the ghost is “the hidden figure of all figures” (1994, p. 150). Or as he elaborates elsewhere, “spectral logic is de facto a deconstructive logic. It is the element of haunting in which deconstruction finds its most hospitable place, at the heart of the living present, in the liveliest pulsation of the philosophical.” (2002, p. 131). “To tell a story,” writes Wolfreys, tracing Derrida’s logic, “is always to invoke ghosts, to open a space through which something other returns [and as such] all stories are, more or less, ghost stories” (Wolfreys, 2002, p. 3)”. By looking at the ways young South Africans tell their stories we are necessarily invoking the spirits of the past. This is always already a key part of living and telling stories as well as the acceptance of stories that exist outside of oneself. This is seemingly at odds with views that understand the embodied nature of memory but it is through the interplay between the individual and collective that such hauntings occur. 31 2.3.3 Embodied memory The body has increasingly received a great deal of attention within and beyond the academy in the last few years, including through studies in anthropology, sociology, philosophy, psychiatry, cognitive science and psychology. This shift to focus on the body, or to refocus on the body, has not escaped the memory realm. Connerton (1989) notes that “memory is sedimented, or amassed, in the body” through social practice (p. 72). Memory is embodied rather than existing (solely) inside the mind, as is often concluded by understandings which rely on a mind-body dualism as originally recognised by Descartes (1984) in his comments about the self as a thinking thing distinct from, and with the possibility of, existing outside of, the body. In psychology the body has typically been the site of internal, personal individual processes through constructivist accounts including evolutionary, cognitive/ behaviourist models and most developmental literature. This view contrasts with more recent social constructionist versions which see language and society at the heart of subjectivity and identity. Beyond this earlier ‘turn to language’, more recently, there has been a ‘turn to embodiment’ erodes the distinction between classical ‘nature’ versus ‘nurture’ debates which set the bodily or physical and the social domains in opposition to one another. Initiated by second wave feminists and picked up by sociologists, postmodern cultural theorists and those in the field of critical body studies, bodies have been reclaimed as a necessary but often silent(ced) and/or under- theorised force in the complex interconnections between materiality and metaphysical, psychological processes15 (Martin, van Wijk, Hans-Arend