UNDOING APARTHEID

225pp., colour illus., paperback, Cambridge, 2023

Premesh Lalu analyses three theatrical works by William Kentridge, Jane Taylor and the Handspring Puppet Company: Faustus in Africa, Woyzeck on the Highveld and Ubu and the Truth Commission, which coincided with the end of apartheid, to support his argument that only an aesthetic education can lead to a post-apartheid future.

"In this stunningly original work of intellectual and aesthetic history, Premesh Lalu offers a powerful theory of petty apartheid as a process of deindividuation and objectification through the manipulation of the senses. By excavating the psychotechnics of a century-long biological racism and its revelation in contemporary object-theatre, Lalu’s book illuminates a path towards an aesthetic education from which a post-apartheid world can emerge. An extraordinary achievement by South Africa’s leading historian and humanist." Debjani Ganguly, University of Virginia

Premesh Lalu is Research Professor and founding Director of the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape.