The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

ut as occurring in the midst of the incessant presence of photographers, reporters
(and sometimes television) and the ongoing processes of visual representation. King,
for example, might have donated the proceeds of his Nobel Prize to civil rights groups,
but he also knew the value of intellectual property, and had the ‘I Have a Dream’
speech copyrighted two days after he gave it. 118 The process of development of King’s
leadership, reluctant as it might have been, must have involved careful processes of
management, projection and even stylisation, by himself and others, and ongoing
processes of decision‐making, minute taking, speechwriting, written reflection and
even administration that must have led to the immediate creation of an archive. King
was caught up in institutional settings that constituted a biographic order. In short, the
narration of King’s life began as the process of its making itself was unfolding, and
each march, campaign or landmark speech represented an accumulation of biographic
occasions, in which a King biography was nurtured and developed, told and retold.
Indeed, in the world of biographic analysis and assessment, it is possible to go beyond
the framework of finding the true narrative, even one characterised by contradiction or
hidden weakness, to understanding the history of the narrative and the process of
narration themselves.
It is these questions about the politics of production that need to find expression in the
creation of memorial sites and in visual display, so that the domain of public history
becomes one of critical reflection. This will enable the landscape of memory to move
beyond the limited frameworks of veneration and celebration through which lives of
‘Great Men’ as well as the “mundane heroics” of local activists have been
commemorated. In fostering an ethos of independent criticism and a memorial
methodology that transcends realist frameworks of representing lives, sites and
institutions of memory can be turned into spaces of contestation, empowerment and
‘public scholarship’. This will go some way to addressing the “robust” criticisms of
poverty rights activist, Jacqueline Smith, who has held a daily protest outside the
118 Paul Shepard, ‘King Center Criticised for Focus on Marketing’; David Plotz, ‘Content is King:
Dexter King is a King for the 90s’.
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