Maurits van Bever Donker is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape. Ross Truscott is a Postdoctoral Associate in Women’s Studies at Duke University, United States. Premesh Lalu is Professor of History and Director of the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape. Gary Minkley holds the Chair in Social Change at the University of Fort Hare, Eastern Cape.

This is exciting work. The concept of the remains—or thinking about postapartheid South Africa based on various theorisings of loss—is a valid one. It is original and astute in its applications of theory and philosophical thinking – Rita Barnard, Director

• Introduction: Traversing the social; Maurits van Bever Donker, Ross Truscott, Premesh Lalu and Gary Minkley; 1. The Mandela Imaginary: Refl ections on post-reconciliation libidinal economy Derek Hook; 2. The ethics of precarity: Judith Butler's reluctant universalism Mari Ruti; 3. Hannah Arendt's work of mourning: The politics of loss, 'the rise of the social' and the ends of apartheid Jaco Barnard-Naude; 4. The return of empathy: Post-apartheid fellow feeling Ross Truscott; 5. Souvenir Annemarie Lawless; 6. Re-covery: Afrikaans rock, apartheid's children and the work of the cover Aidan Erasmus; 7. The graves of Dimbaza: Temporal remains Gary Minkley and Helena Pohlandt-McCormick; 8. The principle of insuffi ciency: Ethics and community at the edge of the social Maurits van Bever Donker; 9. The Trojan Horse and the becoming technical of the human Premesh Lalu.