The South African government gave no quarter to young people who joined the struggle against the apartheid state; indeed, it targeted them. Security forces meted out cruel treatment to youth who rebelled, incarcerated even the very young under dreadful conditions, and used torture frequently, sometimes over long periods of time. Little is known, however, from the perspective of young fighters themselves about the efforts they made to sustain the momentum of struggle, how that affected and was affected by their other social bonds, and what they achieved in terms of growth and paid in terms of harm. War in Worcester combines a study of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)'s findings on the stand taken by South African youth with extended fieldwork undertaken with fourteen young men who, starting in their schooldays, were involved in the struggle in a small town in the Western Cape. Filling a gap in the ethnographic analysis of the role of youth in armed conflict, the book describes, from the perspective of the young fighters themselves, the tactics that young local leaders used and how the state retaliated, young peoples' experiences of pain and loss, the effect on fighters of the extensive use of informers by the state as a weapon of war, and the search for an ethic of survival.
The testimony of these young fighters reveals some limitations of the processes used by the TRC in its search to document the truth. War in Worcester problematizes the use of the term "victim" for the political engagement of young people and calls for attention to patterns of documenting the past and thus to the nature of the archive in recording the character of political forces and the uses of violence. It encourages a fresh analysis of the kinds of revolt being enacted by the young elsewhere in the world, such as North Africa and the Middle East.
**
Review
"Throughout the text there is a tone of concern and care toward the participants, the young men who courageously took on the horrors of the apartheid state."-DON FOSTER, University of Cape Town
"Reynolds interviews 14 South African men who experienced violence and torture in the struggle against apartheid, in order to shed light on the fates of young people in South Africa who fought in the 1980s. Three of the men interviewed also gave testimony at the Boland Human Rights Violation Hearings of June 1996. In addition to presenting the men's recollections and reflections on the time period, Reynolds also offers a critique of the omission of young people's voices in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report and questions how the TRC handled questions of activism and victimhood." -Book News Inc
"Dramatizing the role of children and recalling the place of violence in the anti-apartheid struggle, Pamela Reynolds also offers luminous evidence of imfobe -- the youthful sense that her protagonists generated both to guide and to understand their acts. For an age that honors only non-violent struggle in the face of oppression, and views youth solely as victims when it acknowledges their distinctive experience at all, this book is doubly thought-provoking." -Samuel Moyn, Columbia University, author of The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History
"This devastating yet methodologically restrained account of recollection elicited from black South Africans tortured as children or youth under apartheid, and of the failures of the restitution that followed, achieves an exceptional precision of attention and thought. In attending to the repeated failure of a relation of care for the child, Reynolds reconceives the task of the scholar in relation to government and to the long-term consequences of harm done, and offers powerful reflections on friendship and betrayal, on norms and ethics, and on struggle, its neutralization, and the question of a contemporary politics." -Lawrence Cohen, University of California, Berkeley
"This is an extra-ordinary book that goes below the surface of master stories of the struggle against the cruel regime through which apartheid was sustained for so long in South Africa. Writing in collaboration with the young who see themselves as engaged in a national struggle for liberation rather than as victims, Pamela Reynolds gives us a book that methodologically innovative, theoretically sophisticated yet able to communicate the everyday realities of those who traversed many layers of relationship with swirling emotions of fidelity, betrayal, joy and grief. This book is indeed a treasure unmatched in its simplicity and integrity." -Veena Das, Johns Hopkins University
"Reynolds' work with the 14 men has enabled her to examine at close hand the manner in which the instruments of repression and state terror tore into the fabric of one community, its families and its young activists--most of whom were still in school during the last years of the apartheid period." -Andrew Dawes, University of Cape Town
"'War in Worcester' presents the record of struggle in a small town and a description of relationships among young men who examine their experiences of activism retrospectively and microscopically." -African Studies Review
"Reynolds is arguably the most influential writer on youth and political activism today, and she has written a book that does an enormous amount of work as an archival resource. . ." -Journal of Southern African Studies
About the Author
PAMELA REYNOLDS is Professor Emerita, Johns Hopkins University, and Honorary Professor, University of Cape Town. Her books include Growing Up in a Divided Society: The Contexts of Childhood in South Africa , Childhood in Crossroads: Cognition and Society in South Africa , Dance Civet Cat: Child Labour in the Zambezi Valley , and Traditional Healers and Childhood in Zimbabwe .

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untitled

Reynolds, Pamela (Author)

Forms of living, 1st ed, New York, 2012, ©2013

Forms of living, First edition, New York, 2013

United States, United States of America

Forms of Living (FUP)

Memory of the World Library

producers:
Acrobat Distiller 10.0.0 (Macintosh)

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Memory of the World Librarian: Slowrotation

类型: 图书

丛书名: Forms of Living (FUP)

出版日期: 2012

出版社: Fordham University Press

页码: 272

摘要: The South African government gave no quarter to young people who joined the struggle against...

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The South African government gave no quarter to young people who joined the struggle against the apartheid state; indeed, it targeted them. Security forces meted out cruel treatment to youth who rebelled, incarcerated even the very young under dreadful conditions, and used torture frequently, sometimes over long periods of time. Little is known, however, from the perspective of young fighters about the efforts they made to sustain the momentum of struggle, how that affected and was affected by their other social bonds, and what they achieved in terms of growth and paid in terms of harm. War in Worcester combines a study of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)'s findings on the stand taken by South African youth with extended fieldwork undertaken with 14 young men who, starting in their schooldays, were involved in the struggle in a small town in the Western Cape. Filling a gap in the ethnographic analysis of the role of youth in armed conflict, the book describes, from the perspective of the young fighters themselves, the tactics that young local leaders used and how the state retaliated, young peoples' experiences of pain and loss, the effect on fighters of the extensive use of informers by the state as a weapon of waiy and the search for an ethic-of survival. War in Worcester problematizes the use of the term "victim" for the political engagement of young people and encourages fresh analysis of the kinds of .revolt being enacted by the young elsewhere in the world, such as North Africa and the Middle East

Contents 9
Introduction 15
The Ground on Which They Stood 41
Induction into Politics 64
Untimely Suffering 75
Turning and Being Turned 122
Three Men and Loss 163
Imfobe: The Reach for Moral Principles 167
Neutralizing the Young 191
Epilogue 213
Appendixes 215
Worcester 217
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission: A 1996 explanatory note from the TRC for the public 219
The Boland Hearings 227
The Commission’s Findings on Violence in the Western Cape: An excerpt from Fiona Ross (2003, 103–106) with her generous permission 229
Four Figures from the TRC Report 235
The TRC’s Findings on Children and Youth (1998, 5:254–256) 237
The TRC’s Recommendations on Children and Youth (1998, 5:321) 241
Notes 243
References 255
Index 263

Filling a gap in the ethnographic analysis of the role of youth in armed conflict, this book describes, from the perspective of the young fighters themselves, the tactics that young local leaders used and how the state retaliated, young peoples' experiences of pain and loss, the effect on fighters of the extensive use of informers by the state as a weapon of war, and the search for an ethic of survival

The Ground On Which They Stood -- Interlude 1: Induction Into Politics -- Untimely Suffering -- Turning And Being Turned -- Interlude 2: Three Men And Loss -- Imfobe: The Reach For Moral Principles -- Neutralizing The Young. Pamela Reynolds ; In Collaboration With Nana Charity Khohlokoane ... [et Al.]. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Mode Of Access: World Wide Web.

2021-10-27