Spectres of Reparation in South Africa

Jaco Barnard-Naudé is Professor of Jurisprudence and Co-Director of the Centre for Rhetoric Studies (CRhS) at the Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Praise for Spectres of Reparation in South Africa:“In this ground-breaking book, which draws seamlessly on both African indigenous cosmology and psychoanalytic theory, Barnard-Naudé helps us understand how spectres of reparation continue to haunt South Africa, many years after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) formally finished its work. […] This important book deserves to be read in South Africa and beyond, across disciplines, and by scholars and practitioners who are interested in linking transitional justice to more robust theoretical and political agendas.”- Paul Gready, UNESCO Chair, Centre for Applied Human Rights, University of York, author of The Era of Transitional Justice: The Aftermath of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa and Beyond (2011)."[in this book, Barnard-Naudé brings forward a] challengingly paradox-laden analysis (“As the work of mourning momentarily refuses forgiveness, forgiveness momentarily refuses the work of mourning” (171)), but his notion of “reparative citizenship,” while still highly abstract, offers an intriguing argument for the necessity of “poetic” thinking. For all its critique of the apparent futility of the TRC, Spectres of Reparation in South Africa ultimately insists on the human necessity to continue to seek reparation. In the face of “the Irreparable,” we have to resort to hope, “acts of the imagination through which concretely material reparative action can be undertaken and realized”". - Simon Lewis, College of Charleston, USA, African Studies Review (2024), 1–2Praise for Jaco Barnard-Naudé:“A highly original scholar, at ease in the domains of politics and philosophy, law and literature, Jaco Barnard-Naudé has been making his mark for some time by bringing psychoanalysis to the negotiating table of political injustice. His work, rapidly becoming indispensable, has far-reaching ramifications for anyone reflecting on how to advance in the maelstrom that is South Africa today.”– Jacqueline Rose, Professor and Co-Director, Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London, author of On Violence and On Violence Against Women (2021).

• Chapter 1: IntroductionChapter 2: The Ghost in the "Impossible Machine": Reparation and the Biopolitics of TransitionChapter 3: On Apology and the Spectre of a Haunting Shame in the TRCChapter 4: The Spectre of Reparation in the Archive: The TRC’s Work on the Role of Business During Apartheid and the Ongoing Demand for ReparationChapter 5: The Spectre as Refusal: Reparation and Forgiveness in the Work of MourningChapter 6: Creative Haunting: Towards the Poetic Justice of Reparative CitizenshipChapter 7: Conclusion