Derilene Marco

The proposed project, a manuscript, investigates two different but related elements of South African sensibilities in a post-apartheid season: memory and identities of belonging. In the first section of the manuscript, I explore how South African cinema, after 1994, has played a role in portraying certain notions of memory and belonging through the language of 'Rainbow Nation'. In this section I problematise memory practices and discourses of and around the TRC in cultural representations, particularly in popular forms. The second part of the manuscript takes a more nuanced approach to women as mothers and producers of 'new' South African identities. I am particularly interested in Black motherhood represented as pillars of strength, often pitted against white motherhood, domestic bastions of another kind and protectors of nation. I place these two elements: memory and womanhood in the same conversation through visual representative practices and experiences in SA films and television.