"Methodologies of Engagement": Locating Archives in Post-Apartheid Memory Practices.

Abstract

Post-apartheid South Africa represents a period in which practices of collective memory were fundamentally reshaped in support of political transformation. In my dissertation, I examine archival thinking and practice through South African post-apartheid collective memory frameworks. I argue that the ways in which post-apartheid collective memories are mediated, plays a significant role in how archives are being re-created, shared, valued and understood in post-apartheid South Africa. Drawing from memory studies scholarship that problematizes the collective representation of human experience, and from a body of critical archival literature that addresses the archival role in helping to shape and sustain often profoundly biased collective memories, I address the following research questions: How are collective memories produced and transmitted into the public sphere? How do these processes contribute to archival thinking and practice? I have considered these research questions in light of a public valorization of memory in post-apartheid South Africa that was framed primarily in the discourses of nation building, reconciliation, historical justice, healing, reparations and unification. My dissertation research is based on a multiple case study research design of three post-apartheid memory initiatives – the Digging Deeper Exhibition at the District Six Museum, the Sunday Times Heritage Project, and the South African Democracy Education Trust. The case study methodology was comprised of conducting interviews with curators/producers in each of these sites, analyzing pertinent archival sources, and applying the methods of content analysis to newspaper reviews of each of the cases. The three case studies that I have examined have responded to representational concerns of who facilitates or mediates collective memories, what/who is being represented or excluded, what forums for representative-ness are being made available, and what resources are available to sustain these representations. The significance of this study is its contribution to understanding the implications for archives of a new network of collective memory mediating influences and intermediaries.