ABSTRACT

South Africa has, in recent years, been witnessing the unraveling of narratives of collective being and becoming that are hinged around Apartheid as the singular institution of power to be overcome. In this paper I argue that while Apartheid has provided one of the enduring examples of racial exclusion in the twentieth century we need to think more carefully about histories of empire and their endurance in the present. I trace the archival grain of empire in the various projects of gentrification that have marked the landscape of South Africa’s major cities in recent years. I argue that the transformation of these spaces contains the palimpsestic traces of South Africa’s imperial histories and as such should compel us to take serious how what I call archives of empire continue to mark post-Apartheid spatiality and subjectivity. The #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall student movements began some important archaeological work around reading how we make sense of our contemporary struggles and predicaments and as such should be taken seriously as having staged theoretical interventions in our contemporary social and political landscape.

摘要

近年来，南非目睹了关于种族隔离和集体存在的叙述的瓦解，而这些叙述围绕着种族隔离作为要克服的单一权力机构。在本文中，我认为，尽管种族隔离制度是二十世纪种族排斥的不朽例子之一，但我们仍需更仔细地思考帝国的历史及其当前的承受力。我在各种高档化项目中追溯了帝国的档案，这些项目标志着近年来南非主要城市的景观。我认为这些空间的转变包含南非帝国历史的古迹，因此应该迫使我们认真对待我所谓的帝国档案馆如何继续标记后种族隔离的空间性和主观性。