Aesthetics of Power: Heritage Formation and the Senses in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

This thesis looks at heritage formation, material culture and the senses in processes of post-apartheid nation building. Theoretically it focuses on aesthetics of persuasion and the politics of authentication. Aesthetics of persuasion refers to the ways in which stakeholders craft material cultural forms as convincing heritage indexes and how these forms are perceived by their intended audiences as persuasive. Politics of authentication refers to how stakeholders position material cultural forms as legitimate heritage markers amidst debate and contestation. The thesis contributes to South African and international literature on history, heritage, religion and memory through its distinctive theoretical focus on aesthetics and the senses. It is innovative, furthermore, in being grounded in both textual and qualitative data that includes interviews and field notes gathered during periods of participant observation. The thesis looks at three post-apartheid heritage projects. Firstly, it discusses Freedom Park, a monumental state driven heritage project situated in the capital city Pretoria. Freedom Park commemorates those who died in the struggles for humanity which is intended to stand as the defining representation of South Africa’s cultural history, heritage and diversity. Designed for the post-apartheid nation, Freedom Park was also a functional heritage tourism destination that invited visiting tourists to experience and engage with its nationalist, ‘African’ cultural heritage narrative. Secondly, it looks at the market driven venture, the Sunday Times Heritage Project. The STHP paid homage to newsworthy historical events and figures that featured during the 100 years of the eponymous newspaper’s existence through pieces of site-specific public art memorials. The memorials were designed to recover particular histories and engage particular publics, who often engaged with them in subversive, destructive ways. Thirdly, this thesis tunes into the vuvuzela, a plastic noise-making instrument that became popular globally during the FIFA 2010 Football World Cup. Designed and marketed to South African football fans, the vuvuzela’s popularity led to contestation amongst different stakeholders who struggled over its commercial and symbolic ownership using arguments about its emblematic status as a South African and African cultural heritage object. Focusing on these examples, this dissertation shows how these materially based projects were formed as seemingly authentic, legitimate post-apartheid heritage markers, how those acts of forming involved the reshaping of the senses and sensibilities as modes of apprehending the past, and finally, the modalities of belonging and citizenship they enabled.