Jeffrey C. Alexander

Ronald Eyerman

Tanya Goodman

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is a modern social drama that enabled the nation's apartheid past to be constructed as a cultural trauma, and by doing so created a new collective narrative of diversity and inclusion. The TRC relied primarily on testimonies from victims and perpetrators of apartheid violence who came forward to tell their stories in a public forum. Rather than simply serving as data for setting the historical record straight, this book shows that it was not only the content of these testimonies but also how these stories were told and what values were attached to them that became significant. Goodman argues that the performative nature of the TRC process effectively designated the past as profane and simultaneously imagined a sacred future community based on democratic idealism and universal solidarity.

Truth and Reconciliation in a New South Africa

Staging Solidarity

Elizabeth Butler Breese

Through case studies that examine historical and contemporary crises across the world, the contributing writers to this volume explore the cultural and social construction of trauma. How do some events get coded as traumatic and others which seem equally painful and dramatic not? Why do culpable groups often escape being categorised as perpetrators? These are just some of the important questions answered in this collection. Some of the cases analysed include Mao's China, the Holocaust, the Katyn Massacre and the Kosovo trauma. Expanding the pioneering cultural approach to trauma, this book will be of interest to scholars and postgraduate students of sociology.

Ronald Eyerman

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