Prestigious fellowship for ‘luminary in a fractured world’

Professor Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela of Stellenbosch University (SU) in South Africa has won the 2020 Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Fellowship Award worth ZAR2 million (about US$138,000).

Gobodo-Madikizela was selected based on her project entitled ‘Aesthetics of Trauma, Poetics of Repair’, which concerns the rethinking of trauma in new terms and specifically focuses on historical trauma and its transgenerational repercussions.

This two-year project will explore how the arts, rather than forgiveness and reconciliation, might be deployed to pursue a reparative and transformative vision.

In an interview with University World News, Gobodo-Madikizela said the project is divided into two parts. Firstly, a book project in which she will use the archives of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to analyse some of the narratives of trauma experienced during the years of apartheid.

“I am interested in the question of how the traumas witnessed at the TRC might be playing out as transgenerational repercussions of the apartheid past at a collective level in the post-apartheid context,” she said.

“At the centre of my study is the question of how the TRC moment might 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 who remain at the margins of society, despite apartheid’s demise.”

The second part of the project involves working with young scholars and students who will engage with a digital exhibition, Through the Eyes of Survivors of Apartheid Trauma: Life despite pain and suffering.

This digital platform was created from stories in the book These Are the Things that Sit With Us , a collection of excerpts from research interviews about memories of experiences of apartheid.

Her vision is to collaborate with colleagues of the drama department at SU who will work with their students to produce and direct theatrical projects that will bring these stories of experiences of apartheid trauma into a dialogue with audiences.

The project seeks to explore how the arts “might contribute to building solidarity across registers of difference in a way that fosters a politics of care and responsible citizenship”, Gobodo-Madikizela said.

Truth and reconciliation

Gobodo-Madikizela says scholars have not yet fully explored how sustained violence in the past intersects with structural ruptures of inequality in the present, and how this casts a dark shadow on the lives of subsequent generations.

“At the end of 1995,” Gobodo-Madikizela said, “I suspended work on my doctoral thesis for two years and six months to join the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Now, almost 25 years since the TRC concluded its work, its hopeful vision has all but dissipated.

“Clearly, there were certain things that should have been done during the TRC, and certain things that should have been done but were not done after the TRC process.

“These problems cast a shadow on South Africa’s faltering vision of democracy, and they have contributed to the majestic grief that continues to haunt families and communities for whom the TRC process did not provide answers to questions about the murder of their loved ones, or the whereabouts of their remains.”

Gobodo-Madikizela hopes to return to the TRC archive and view it “with fresh eyes”: “For instance, how does the current violence in South Africa reflect on the TRC moment of transition? How might we ‘listen’ to the TRC testimonies in a way that reveals, not the singularity of the testimonies but their multiplicity, and understand the full extent of what the repair of this collective trauma might mean for what was then the future but is now the present?”

She also co-hosts a series of seminars with a group of young scholars as part of a ‘trauma studies group’ that is concerned with the rethinking of trauma theory.

“I am collaborating with colleagues at three institutions, the University of Dar es Salaam, Exeter University and the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, on expanding the notion of trauma archives,” says Gobodo-Madikizela, who holds the South African National Research Chair in Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma.

‘Torchbearer’

The annual Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship Award recognises scholarship of the highest calibre across various academic and research disciplines. It is a flagship award by the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, a significant funder of education, arts and culture and civil society organisations.

Over the past five years, distributions made by the trust have ranged from $7 million to $9 million annually, with roughly 60% allocated to higher education as part of a sustained effort to build local academia.

“Being awarded this prestigious fellowship simply overwhelmed me. It is a tremendous honour, which I accept with deep gratitude. I believe that few topics stake a more compelling claim on humanities research than the legacies of violent histories and their enduring traumatic effects across generations.

“An opportunity to advance new intellectual frontiers in this field and to be able to involve young scholars as partners on the project is a rare gift,” Gobodo-Madikizela said.

Jonathan Oppenheimer, a member of the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust board of trustees, stated: “Gobodo-Madikizela is a globally recognised scholar, a luminary in a fractured world in desperate need of healing intergenerational wounds.

“Her research is timely, interdisciplinary and tackles transgenerational trauma in new and relevant ways, to open global participation. Gobodo-Madikizela is the torchbearer of truth and reconciliation and leads the charge from Africa.”

Gobodo-Madikizela obtained her BA and honours degrees from Fort Hare University, her masters degree in clinical psychology from Rhodes University, and her PhD in psychology from the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

She is internationally recognised for her work in the fields of trauma studies and research on the psychoanalytic interpretation of remorse and forgiveness.

Her past research fellowships include those from Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study; the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University; the Claude Ake Visiting Chair in Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University in Sweden; and Distinguished African Scholar at Cornell University’s Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

Applications for the 2021 Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship are now open, and close on 31 October 2021.