Staging Solidarity

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.

Author Biography

Tanya Goodman is an independent researcher who has taught at Yale Law School, worked with various human rights oriented nongovernmental organizations in South Africa, and developed a multimedia project related to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission under a grant from the U.S. Institute for Peace. Her research to date has focused on issues related to truth commissions and transitional justice on a local and global scale. Ronald Eyerman is Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University. His recent books include Music and Social Movements (1998) and Cultural Trauma Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity (2002), both from Cambridge University Press. Jeffrey C. Alexander is the Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology at Yale University, where he is Codirector of the Center for Cultural Sociology. Among his many influential books is The Civic Sphere (2006).