Cultured Violence – Narrative, Social Suffering, and Engendering Human Rights in Contemporary South Africa: Postcolonialism Across the Disciplines

Cultured Violence explores contemporary South African culture as a test case for the achievement of democracy by constitutional means in the wake of prolonged and violent cultural conflict. Drawing on and juxtaposing narratives of profoundly different kinds, including the fiction of J. M. Coetzee, public testimony from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, documents from former Deputy President Jacob Zuma’s rape trial, and personal interviews, Rosemary Jolly illuminates different cultural ideas of the “state of the nation” and uncovers otherwise elusive understandings of South African subjects.