The Invisible Corner

The Invisible Corner offers a nuanced and profoundly §insightful understanding of the complicated afterlife §of apartheid state violence for its survivors in the §current times. It examines how the assassination of §seven young activists in Gugulethu, Cape Town in 1986 §has been made into an event , rendered through §multiple regimes of discourse and performativity and §subject to the institutional framings §of truth and reconciliation . The author §disaggregates the event, as it is publicly §represented and memorialised, from the ways that the §killing continues to impact on the everyday life of §their families and political community. In this way, §he probes the limits of the sayable that §institutional forms of memorialisation impose on §survivors of state violence. Tracing the §fragile cracks of recent history in which hope, §despair, silence and the tenacious pursuit of dignity §in contemporary South Africa remain entangled in the §structural constraints of a negotiated regime change, §this book offers an unparalleled insight into the §ongoing challenges for justice, social repair and §historical accountability. Heidi Grunebaum, §University of Western Cape, South Africa.