A ‘secret history’ of local mourning: The South African War and state commemoration

Abstract

A central claim in the war commemoration literature is that World War I brought about a fundamental change in state commemorative practices. This argument is problematised using a case study concerned with the relationship between local mourning, state commemoration and remembrance following the South African War of 1899–1902, in which meanings about nationalism, belonging and citizenship have been inscribed within a ‘legendary topography’ which has concretised remembrance in commemorative memorials and monuments. Two silences in commemoration from this War — a partial one concerning children and a more total one concerning all black people — are teased out in relation to the Vrouemonument built in 1913, the Gedenktuine or Gardens of Remembrance constructed during the 1960s and 70s, and some post-1994 initiatives, and also related to ideas about citizenship and belonging. Many commemorative practices claimed as originating in Europe between 1914 and 1918 were predated by these of the South Africa War, which sometimes acted as a direct prototype for later European ones.

“One must never forget, and precisely for political reasons, that the mystery that is incorporated, then repressed, is never destroyed. This genealogy has an axiom, namely that history never effaces what it buries; it always keeps within itself the secret of whatever it encrypts, the secret of its secret. This is a secret history of kept secrets. For that reason the genealogy is also an economy” ¹

Derrida 1995, p.21.

Derrida 1995, p.21.

Notes

Derrida 1995, p.21.