Speaking Places: Prison, Poetry, and the South African Nation

Abstract

Ernest Renan's definition of the essence of a nation?that all indi? viduals must have a lot in common and also that they must all have forgotten a great deal?has perhaps never seemed so apt as it does in the case of postapartheid South Africa (Bhabha 11). Indeed, the history of that country's transition to democracy has at times been so stirring that one could be forgiven for applying Renan's observation in the positive way he intended?without the irony that recent theorizing on the nationalism would teach us to detect in it. Consider the following account of Nelson Mandela's joyous inauguration ceremony in 1994:

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