The people's past: Towards transforming the present

Community and Class Struggle: Problems in Methodology

“…Nevertheless, their sense of moral outrage (against apartheid society) is frequently combined with a latent positivism, resulting in a confused methodology, often under the guise of Marxism.s More sophisticated are the techniques of oral history where &dquo;qualitative&dquo; means the use of data which has the capacity to convey something of the quality of the lives of people to outsiders who have themselves not experienced that way of living, or to the participants in that way of living themselves (Bozzoli 1983, 10). This approach has had enormous impact on South African historiography, infusing a variety of disciplines with an imperative to &dquo;write from below&dquo; (Van Onselen 1982;Bozzoli 1979;1983;Manson et al 1985;Callinicos 1986;Sideris 1986;Cooper 1986; amongst others) and to the democratization of knowledge to a much wider readership/audience which includes the working class/peasant/lumpenproletarian subjects of the research. Academics working in the labour movement, together with a variety of environmental, educational, labour, health, psychological, culture, media and video units around the country, and the Wits History Workshop, have taken a further step (see, e.g.…”

Eyes left! Some comments on Christo van Staden's ‘Claiming the African Mind’

“…Thus many interventions have been made in the field through dramatic theory and performance (Steadman 1989;Dalrymple 1987; the Dramaide project at Unizul). Further work in education (Muller 1986;Callinicos 1986;Lungwangwa 1988;Bertelsen 1991) has seen cultural studies eliciting responses from South African scholars who want to make interventions developed from local experience in local conditions, making recommendations which are applicable to local practitioners in a variety of contexts. Since its inception the South African sector of the field has also featured a visual anthropological orientation (Scott 1994 and.…”

Landscape of memory: commemorative monuments, memorials and public statuary in post-apartheid South-Africa

“…Roland Barthes' notion of 2 Internationally such an understanding of history owes much to (and was partly prompted by) Foucault's seminal writings. In the South African context, the constructed nature of historical discourse and the link between history production and power -or as Trouillot (1995) Minkley and Rassool 1998;Coombes 2003;Callinicos 1986. myth as 'depoliticised speech' is important for its emphasis on what he describes as 'blissful clarity', the abolition of complexities and contradictions for the sake of rendering the myth pure, innocent, natural and eternally justified. 3 Most useful for the present study is Assmann's (2003: 76) concept of myth as any past that has been (or is being) fixed and internalised as foundational history -irrespective of whether this past is fictional or factual.…”

“…Popular history and radical history were understood as alternative history, countering the dominant historical narratives and discourses developed by the ruling groups. Its aim was to examine the origins of prevailing struggles and the structures and power-relations underlying the contemporary socio-political order, drawing on new methodologies and techniques such as the use of personal testimony, experiential and oral history (Callinicos 1986). …”