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Listening for the Quiet Violence in the Unspoken

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Post-Conflict Hauntings

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict ((PSCAC))

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Abstract

Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s idea that the body politic “appears” in the act of citizens talking together, this chapter problematises the emphasis on voice in South Africa’s political talking spaces. I illustrate the problem of insisting on voice as the currency in political talking spaces through the narrative of a young woman farm worker who is haunted by “quiet violence”—a form of post-apartheid subjugation which she is unable to articulate within a broader political language. For her narrative to “appear” in the political talking space requires a reconsideration of conditions that determine who and what can be heard in political talking spaces. Shifting the focus from voice to listening, the chapter examines the prospects for listening as a politically transformative act with possibilities for reconfiguring ways in which South Africans “appear” to one another in talking and listening as a body politic.

When we come together to narrate our traumatic experiences, we invite others not only to listen to what we have to say, but journey with us as we ‘re-find’ ourselves and re-find the language that has been lost.

—Van Der Merwe & Gobodo-Madikizela 2008, p. 27

The A.W. Mellon Foundation provided financial support for the research that informs this chapter. The National Research Foundation (NRF) provides funding support to the South African Research Chair Initiative (SARChI) Chair in Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma at Stellenbosch University, which provided the space for writing this chapter.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Not her real name.

  2. 2.

    References to race in this chapter conform to protocols used by Statistics South Africa. Racial classification is problematic but necessary to understand the enduring legacy of apartheid classification in South Africa’s political, social and economic narrative.

  3. 3.

    I use “Black” here as an encompassing category including Coloured and Indian people in South Africa.

  4. 4.

    Not his real name.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Studies in Historical Trauma and Transformation, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

    Marietjie Oelofsen

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  1. Marietjie Oelofsen
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Correspondence to Marietjie Oelofsen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

    Kim Wale  & Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela  & 

  2. Department of Sociology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Jeffrey Prager

  3. New Center for Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Jeffrey Prager

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Oelofsen, M. (2020). Listening for the Quiet Violence in the Unspoken. In: Wale, K., Gobodo-Madikizela, P., Prager, J. (eds) Post-Conflict Hauntings. Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39077-8_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39077-8_8

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-39076-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-39077-8

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