I would like to share this story of the tremendous privilege of being awarded the Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship for my project titled “Aesthetics of Trauma, Poetics of Repair.” Below is a summary of the project.

This project brings together many threads from my interests as a writer and as a scholar. I will return to the archive of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as a memorial space of bearing witness to collective pain, and use select testimonies about experiences of violence presented at TRC public hearings to engage a close (re)examination of the meaning of trauma. Given that we in South Africa are at the future moment that was envisaged 25 years ago when the TRC started its work, I am interested in the question of what trauma’s transgenerational repercussions at individual and collective levels mean in the post-apartheid context. At the centre of the study are the questions: how might the TRC moment of South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy illuminate the complexity of violence in contemporary South Africa —not just the physical violence but also the violence of racism and of acts of disregard and dehumanisation of communities at the margins of society? And what imaginaries might be employed both for the repair of the indelible legacies of trauma and to open up space for human (re)connection and what I call reparative humanism? I will examine some creative works (music and visual art) that were created to capture the intensely charged moments of the TRC and explore their capacity as aesthetic and ethical spaces of encounter that can foster the kind of solidarity that inspires concern and action for social justice.