Remembering the Nation, Dismembering Women?

Remembering the nation, dismembering women? Explores the ways in which the imaginative reconstruction of post-apartheid South Africa as 'rainbow nation' has been produced from images of women that dismember their bodies and disremember their historical presence. From Krotoa-Eva and Sarah Bartmann to Nongqawuse and Winnie Mandela, Samuelson tackles the figurations of some of the most controversial and significant women in the making of modern South Africa. Drawing on feminist, postcolonial and post-structuralist theory and close textual readings of literary and cultural texts produced during the first decade of democracy, her analysis offers a provocative critique of the formation of nationalist and feminist collectivities.