WORKING WITH THE APARTHEID ARCHIVE: OR, OF WITNESS AND TESTIMONY

Authors

  • Leswin Laubscher University of Stellenbosch & Duquesne University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17159//2309-8708/2010/n40a4

Keywords:

Apartheid Archive Project, hauntology, witnessing, testimony, Levinas, Derrida, apartheid, ghosts

Abstract

Working with the apartheid archive demands a spectral scholarship – an engagement with the dead and the past, and the unknown of a future-to-be. This “hauntology” poses challenges unlike those of a traditional, evidentiary ontology and epistemology. Indeed, to the extent that it is an ethical metaphysics, as proposed by Emmanuel Levinas, that motivates all knowing, including that of the self and psyche, the manner of the researcher’s response is in the order of witnessing and testimony. As particular mode of response, the witness who testifies sees his or her task less in terms of generating totalising thematic knowledge, than in tracing the limits of knowledge in the experience of the other.

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Author Biography

Leswin Laubscher, University of Stellenbosch & Duquesne University

Department of Psychology, University of Stellenbosch
Stellenbosch, South Africa &
Department of Psychology, Duquesne University
Pittsburgh, USA

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Published

2025-02-25

How to Cite

Laubscher, L. (2025). WORKING WITH THE APARTHEID ARCHIVE: OR, OF WITNESS AND TESTIMONY. PINS-Psychology in Society, 40(1), 49–63. https://doi.org/10.17159//2309-8708/2010/n40a4

Issue

Vol. 40 No. 1 (2010)

Section

Articles

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