Overview

We Are Not South African explores how national identity functions as a colonial tool of communication, control, and power. Author Rachel Lara van der Merwe examines how humans and the planet are integrally shaped by the idea of the nation and speculates on how different sociopolitical imaginaries, instead of the nation, could inform ways of being-together in the world. Linking national identity to colonialism, the book broadens the idea of the nation to include its impact on all forms of life, human and more-than-human. Van der Merwe builds her argument on three central observations: that nations are made up of conflicting and fractured imaginaries, not unified, cohesive ones; the nation is divisive by nature, tracing back to its colonial origins; and the nation, along with the state, exploits both humans and more-than-humans. In order to build a more just and sustainable planetary society, she argues, liberation from such colonial formations is vital. In response, the book asks, How could we reimagine how we organize our societies through values of relationality and mutual care rather than rigid borders? What sociopolitical imaginaries do we need, or already possess, that might inform new configurations of community?

Full Product Details

9781978842977

Table of Contents

Reviews

""From the toppling of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes to the Cape Town Water Crisis, social media, and more, van der Merwe expertly shows what it means to 'stay with the trouble' as post-apartheid South Africans audition new repertoires of belonging, within and beyond the theater of the nation."" --Ted Striphas ""author of Algorithmic Culture Before the Internet"" ""This remarkable study reframes the nation as a colonial medium, forging an original synthesis between South African political economy and decolonial ecopolitics. By analyzing the twin exploitations of emigration and ecology, it persuasively dismantles the nation-state and offers the relational ontology of ubuntu as a vital, actionable roadmap for post-national liberation and socioecological justice."" --Francis B. Nyamnjoh ""author of #RhodesMustFall: Nibbling at Resilient Colonialism in South Africa""

Author Information

Rachel Lara van der Merwe is an assistant professor in the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and is a research fellow at the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies at the University of the Free State.

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