Undoing Apartheid

Post-apartheid South Africa still struggles to overcome the past, not just because the material conditions of apartheid linger but because the intellectual conditions it created have not been thoroughly dismantled. The system of 'petty apartheid', which controlled the minutia of everyday life, became a means of dragooning human beings into adapting to increasingly mechanized forms of life that stifle desire and creative endeavour. As a result, apartheid is incessantly repeated in the struggle to move beyond it. In Undoing Apartheid, Premesh Lalu argues that only an aesthetic education can lead to a future beyond apartheid. To find ways to escape the vicious cycle, he traces the patterns created by 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 fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of apartheid. Through the analysis of these works, Lalu uncovers the roots of modern thinking about race and affirms the need to revitalize a post-apartheid reconciliation endowed with truth – if only to keep alive the rhyme of hope and history.

In the decades following World War II, American liberals had a vision for the world. Their ambitions would not stop at the water’s edge: progressive internationalism, they believed, could help peoples everywhere achieve democracy, prosperity, and freedom. Chastened in part by the failures of these grand aspirations, in recent years liberals and the Left have retreated from such idealism. Today, as a beleaguered United States confronts a series of crises, does the postwar liberal tradition offer any useful lessons for American engagement with the world? The historian Leon Fink examines key cases of progressive influence on postwar U.S. foreign policy, tracing the tension between liberal aspirations and the political realities that stymie them. From the reconstruction of post-Nazi West Germany to the struggle against apartheid, he shows how American liberals joined global allies in pursuit of an expansive political, social, and economic vision. Even as liberal internationalism brought such successes to the world, it also stumbled against domestic politics or was blind to the contradictions in capitalist development and the power of competing nationalist identities. A diplomatic history that emphasizes the roles of social class, labor movements, race, and grassroots activism, Undoing the Liberal World Order suggests new directions for a progressive American foreign policy.

This fresh interpretation of apartheid South Africa integrates histories of resistance with the analysis of power - asking not only why apartheid was defeated, but how it came to survive for so long.

Few places have felt the weight of colonization and slavery the way South Africa has. The ruling powers of Dutch and British settlers set in place a legal system designed to keep the races separated and unequal. Readers will come to understand these laws, known as apartheid, and the terrible effects they had. They will also learn how the echoes of apartheid still resound in both culture and politics in South Africa. Stark, compelling photographs and intriguing sidebars bring readers face to face with apartheid's harsh reality, while also revealing a nation trying to learn from its difficult past.

Mugabe's policy of land seizures in Zimbabwe raised concerns in South Africa. Set amidst these conflicts, Gaining Ground? shows how land reform policy and practice in post-apartheid South Africa has been produced and contested. Winner of the inaugural Elliott P. Skinner Book Award of the Association of Africanist Anthropology, 2008

What if Mahatma Gandhi, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela and Jurgen Habermas had a conversation on what it means to be a human being? This book synthesizes the depiction of human nature in relation to (anti)capitalisms and (anti)narcissisms in the work of Mahatma Gandhi (Moksha), Malcolm X (Islam), Nelson Mandela (Ubuntu), and Jurgen Habermas (Communicative Action/Critical Theory).

The Encyclopedia of Diplomacy is a complete and authoritative 4-volume compendium of the most important events, people and terms associated with diplomacy and international relations from ancient times to the present, from a global perspective. An invaluable resource for anyone interested in diplomacy, its history and the relations between states Includes newer areas of scholarship such as the role of non-state organizations, including the UN and Médecins Sans Frontières, and the exercise of soft power, as well as issues of globalization and climate change Provides clear, concise information on the most important events, people, and terms associated with diplomacy and international relations in an A-Z format All entries are rigorously peer reviewed to ensure the highest quality of scholarship Provides a platform to introduce unfamiliar terms and concepts to students engaging with the literature of the field for the first time