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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:From narratives of miscegenation to post-modernist re-imagining: toward a historiography of Coloured identity in South Africa
Author:Adhikari, MohamedISNI
Year:2008
Periodical:African Historical Review
Volume:40
Issue:1
Pages:77-100
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:Coloureds
group identity
historiography
External link:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17532520802249472
Abstract:This article traces changing interpretations of the nature of Coloured identity and the history of the Coloured community in South Africa in both popular thinking as well as the academy. It explores some of the main contestations that have arisen between rival schools of thought, particularly their stance on the popular perception that Colouredness is an inherent racial condition derived from miscegenation. The essay identifies four distinct paradigms in historical writing on the Coloured people. Firstly, there is the essentialist school which regards Colouredness as a product of miscegenation and represents the conventional understanding of the identity. Secondly, instrumentalists view Coloured identity as an artificial creation of the white ruling class who used it as a ploy to divide and rule the black majority. This explanation, which first emerged in academic writing in the early 1980s, held sway in antiapartheid circles. Opposing these interpretations are what may be termed the social constructionists who from the early 1990s stressed the complexities of identity formation and the agency of Coloured people in the making of their own identities. Most recently the rudiments of a fourth approach, of applying postmodern theory, especially the concept of creolization, to Coloured identity have appeared. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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