(Post)apartheid Conditions: Psychoanalysis and Social Formation (Studies in the Psychosocial)

(Post)apartheid Conditions: Psychoanalysis and Social Formation advances a series of psychoanalytic perspectives on contemporary South Africa, exploring key psychosocial topics such as space-identity, social fantasy, the body, whiteness, memory and nostalgia. What are the psychical mechanisms that underlie a given social formation? (Post)apartheid Conditions investigates this question by exploring a series of psychosocial topics - the body, space-identity, whiteness, racism and nostalgia - within a specific socio-historical context. The South African situation, one of both social transformation and historical stasis, provides the opportunity to explore how a number of psychoanalytic concepts - the uncanny, fantasy, melancholia, working through, retroaction - function at a societal level, at turns impeding and facilitating political change. Drawing on material collected by the Apartheid Archive Project, and the writings of Sara Ahmed, Steve Biko, Judith Butler, Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Zizek, this book is of interest both to a general Psychosocial Studies audience and to readers interested in the cultural history of South Africa Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction: (Post)apartheid Psychosociality....Pages 1-17 The Monumental Uncanny....Pages 18-46 Apartheid’s Corps Morcelé....Pages 47-73 Retrieving Biko....Pages 74-101 ‘Impossibility’ and the Retrieval of Apartheid History....Pages 102-124 Apartheid’s Lost Attachments....Pages 125-146 Mimed Melancholia....Pages 147-169 Screened History: Nostalgia as Defensive Formation....Pages 170-193 Conclusion: Time Signatures....Pages 194-205 Back Matter....Pages 206-242