Institutions of Public Culture
2006-2007 Fellows
Research Fellows
Premesh Lalu (Department of History, University of the Western Cape) will spend his time at Emory working on a book manuscript entitled In the Event of History: Colonial Archive, Nationalist Narration, Postcolonial Critique of Apartheid. He will continue his research on the formation of subaltern public spheres that call for critical reflection on what he considers a grievously incomplete post-apartheid transition. Lalu hopes to formulate new language to speak about apartheid, language that might rephrase concepts fundamental to the constitution of a democratic post-apartheid public sphere. He analyzes the colonial archive as a specific mode of evidence (not simply a storehouse of documents) and considers how subaltern publics affect its operation. Two key cases for Lalu’s project are the discourses surrounding the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and Nicholas Gcaleka’s mission to retrieve a nineteenth-century Xhosa king’s skull in the immediate aftermath of the demise of formal apartheid. In both cases, Lalu investigates how modes of evidence specific to the colonial archive defined parameters within which events and interpretations took shape, thwarting subaltern understandings and gestures as alternative sites of power. Drawing on the work of Partha Chatterjee, he uses these examples to develop a postcolonial critique of history. Lalu has published articles in a number of journals, including the South African Historical Journal, History and Theory, Africa Today and Kronos. He is also chair of the Programme on the Study of the Humanities in Africa and a trustee of the District Six Foundation. (Spring Semester)
Helen Moffett (African Gender Institute, University of Cape Town) is a freelance academic, writer, editor and trainer and a Research Fellow at the African Gender Institute. While at Emory, she will be working on a book about rape narratives and sexual violence as a means of policing women’s citizenship in South Africa after apartheid. Moffett's project, "Eh, eh, uncle": Can the subaltern say no? The public construction and performance of (violent) sexual cultures in post-apartheid South Africa", will include papers on the "body politics of rape" and training materials used in "body literacy" programs. During her time at Emory she will focus especially on analyzing the 2006 rape trial of Jacob Zuma, formerly deputy president of South Africa and currently deputy president of the governing political party, the African National Congress (ANC). Moffett intends to explore what that trial revealed about the public culture of sexuality in the 21st century post-colonial state, the role the media played, how issues of gender and class relate to issues of sexual violence, and the distance and disparities between "public" and "popular" discourses and between Zuma's claim to be "100% Zulu boy" and the dismay of many Zulu sangomas (traditional healers) and elders who believe he committed a form of social incest requiring cleansing rituals. Moffett received her PhD from the English Department at the University of Cape Town, where she taught for eight years. She has held fellowships at Princeton University and Mount Holyoke College and currently serves on the editorial board of the journal Feminist Africa. She has also worked in publishing, and was Oxford University Press’s academic editor for four years. Rape Crisis (South Africa) and Womankind Worldwide (UK) have both used Moffett’s training and education material. (Spring Semester)
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