The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

Since the 1970s, the terrain of resistance studies in South African scholarship unfolded
seemingly within two broad frameworks. These frameworks were not mutually
exclusive, and it is possible to demonstrate significant moments of agreement, overlap
and fusion, as well as philosophical affinities in certain ways. Also, certain works
contained features of more than one framework, and others were not easily categorised.
These frameworks at times also resonated with histories produced outside the academy,
especially as old and new museums, and other heritage bodies sought to reveal pasts,
deemed to be previously hidden from view. Around the turn of the 20 th century, these
frameworks also resonated with official history projects outside the academy, which
drew upon academic research and university facilities and forums, as well as political
constituencies to constitute a hybrid space of historical production between the academy
and the political domain. 13 In broad outline, though, resistance was narrated through
these distinct frames, each with different points of emphasis and different political
implications.
The first framework can be identified as ‘documentary history’, which was premised
upon “gathering evidence and making referential statements in the form of truth claims
based on that evidence”. 14 The main roots of this branch of South African resistance
studies seem to be in American‐based political science and political history. The second
is the framework of social history which developed in South Africa during the 1980s in
the form of ‘history from below’, and which became a complex and diverse field. Under
the influence of popular resistance politics during the 1980s, ‘History from below’ also
took shape as ‘people’s history’, particularly at the University of the Western Cape. The
work of radical scholarship in the form of history ‘from below’ emerged as a counter‐
narrative to power and domination, in which resistance was read as the corner stone of
13 Here, I am thinking about the South African Democracy Education Trust (SADET) and its ‘Road
to Democracy’ Research Project, a presidential history project which was inaugurated by President
Thabo Mbeki on Human Rights Day, 21 March 2001. See footnote 202.
14 Dominic LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2001, p 1. See Chapter One of this book for a critical discussion of documentary history, its
research procedures and its philosophical underpinnings.
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