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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Between recognition and resentment: an Afrikaner trade union's brand of post-nationalism |
Author: | Boersema, Jacob R. |
Year: | 2012 |
Periodical: | African Studies (ISSN 1469-2872) |
Volume: | 71 |
Issue: | 3 |
Pages: | 408-425 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | Afrikaners group identity trade unions |
External link: | https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2012.740884 |
Abstract: | What comes after Afrikaner nationalism? This article presents a detailed analysis of the discourse of the mainly white Afrikaner trade union Solidarity to explore Afrikaner identity politics after apartheid. Solidarity has claimed a remarkably prominent position in the postapartheid debates about Afrikaner identity, race and class. The trade union's success should be explained within the context of the neoliberal elite transition and the uneven impact of the African National Congress (ANC)'s policies of racial redress. Both developments affect particularly the lower middle class of Afrikaners. The author exposes subtle shifts in Solidarity's rhetoric after 1994: away from the language of Afrikaner nationalism and white supremacy, and towards a new discourse organized around the tropes of 'rights' and 'belonging'. This discourse has given new legitimacy to Solidarity in South Africa's postapartheid political landscape, while simultaneously repositioning Afrikaners as a victimized and threatened minority that is no longer privileged. However, a tension in Solidarity's discourse between this new politics of recognition and their politics of resentment remains. The author explains this tension through the distorting effects of shame dynamics. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |