Natasha Erlank, University of Johannesburg, will be speaking on “Women and Memorialisation in Contemporary South Africa” on Wednesday, October 22 at 1:00 pm in the History Lounge, 433 Paterson Hall.
Since 1994 cities across South Africa have moved to commemorate the heroes of the struggle
against apartheid through the naming of public space and infrastructure. Street naming and
labelling is a form of commemorative politics and South Africa is well-known for its conscious
attempts at the memorialization of the anti-apartheid struggle and its history, through national
and local heritage initiatives. However, the way in which public infrastructure including street
names has also served to commemorate this past has seldom been considered, and
memorialization is seldom seen as an issue of gender. This paper examines the debates around
street renaming which have occurred since 1994, looking at how the narrow, contemporary
politics of racial equity via commemoration of the anti-apartheid struggle have turned what might
have been an opportunity to foreground different facets of the South African past into a lost
opportunity.
This is part of the African Studies Brownbag Seminar Series
(http://www.carleton.ca/africanstudies/)
For more information, please contact the Institute of African Studies at
613-520-2600 ext. 2220 or African_Studies@carleton.ca
*For a campus map, please see: http://www2.carleton.ca/cu/campus/