Melancholia of Freedom-Social Life in an Indian Township in South Africa (PB) TBHansen (AFRICANA NEW
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Melancholia of Freedom - Social Life in an Indian Townshipin South Africa (PB)
ThomasBlom Hansen (OUT OF PRINT NEW)
Melancholia of Freedom - Social Life in an Indian Townshipin South Africa (PB)
ThomasBlom Hansen (OUT OF PRINT NEW)
The end of apartheid in 1994 signaled a moment of freedomand a promise of a nonracial future. With this promise came an injunction:define yourself as you truly are, as an individual, and as a community. Almosttwo decades later it is clear that it was less the prospect of that future thanthe habits and horizons of anxious life in racially defined enclaves thatdetermined postapartheid freedom. In this book, Thomas Blom Hansen offers anin-depth analysis of the uncertainties, dreams, and anxieties that haveaccompanied postapartheid freedoms in Chatsworth, a formerly Indian township inDurban. Exploring five decades of township life, Hansen tells the stories ofordinary Indians whose lives were racialized and framed by the township, andhow these residents domesticated and inhabited this urban space and itsinstitutions, during apartheid and after.
Hansen demonstrates the complex and ambivalent nature ofordinary township life. While the ideology of apartheid was widely rejected,its practical institutions, from urban planning to houses, schools, andreligious spaces, were embraced in order to remake the community. Hansendescribes how the racial segmentation of South African society still informsdaily life, notions of race, personhood, morality, and religious ethics. Healso demonstrates the force of global religious imaginings that promise auniversal and inclusive community amid uncertain lives and futures in thepostapartheid nation-state.
