The Monumental Uncanny

Abstract

Given the aim within psychosocial studies of utilizing concepts that exist ‘indivisibly between’ the psychical and the social, it is fitting that this first chapter tackles the topic of psychical space and its relation to ideology. I have opted to start with a psychosocial ‘case study’ of an apartheid monument, for another reason also: much of the empirical material gathered here is squarely located in the post-apartheid context. Although each of the chapters in this book straddle the apartheid/post-apartheid divide in some or other way, this chapter looks further back than any other into apartheid history.