The forensic, the missing and the memorial: how missing persons of apartheid state sanctioned violence are memorialised through the mediation of the work of the forensic
| dc.contributor.author | Pretorius, Nicola | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-09-30T13:35:24Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-09-30T13:35:24Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024 | |
| dc.description.abstract | This mini-thesis is concerned with a text panel titled, ‘THE MISSING’ and a display cabinet that contains exhumed artefacts recovered alongside human remains of persons categorised as missing on exhibit at the //hapo museum at Freedom Park Heritage Site, located in Pretoria, South Africa. The question this mini-thesis asks is how missing persons of apartheid are memorialised at //hapo museum. It is through an analysis of this memorialisation, that the forensic emerges in two distinct ways, first as a category and then as part of the practice of exhumation. In exploring these notions, I critically examine the category “missing” as it has been presented at //hapo and the work of the forensic in relation to the work of memorialisation efforts. The position of the text panel (within //hapo) requires a disruption of time, a looking back and it is only through this looking back and turn to the past that ‘THE MISSING’ text panel is seen. In chapter 1, I examine the //hapo museum and how it sits within the larger post apartheid museum moment. I suggest thinking of the text panel through the exhibitory practice of the “dilemma label”. It is through exploring the inscribed accounts of the text panel that the forensic emerges, which is the work of Chapter 2. I also suggest that through forensis, that the text panel is a forum (of field and forum). I cast the text panel as forum as it is a public space where the results of the investigation (the field) is then presented, mediated and potentially contested. In chapter 3, I do an exhumation (of sorts) of the cabinet displays at //hapo museum that contain exhumed artefacts recovered alongside human remains of persons categorised as missing. I argue that the text panel at //hapo is headed by ‘THE MISSING’ which then resides alongside a set of cabinets display which contain the exhumed artefacts are a memorialisation effort by Freedom Park and the //hapo museum curators. The ‘museum-cemetery’ is both concept and category, which creates a practice but also a space that re-figures the dead within that dynamic space and within political and historiographical charged ways. It is a dynamic political space for the dead to be made/ unmade and through which their death can be processed and reconfigured. I make use of this concept and category to understand the text panel and the display cabinets together as a single ‘museum – cemetery.’ It is through positioning the display cabinets as a coffin and the text panel as a gravestone, that this connection can be made clear. The ‘museum-cemetery’ confines but also potentially remakes the afterlives of the artefacts. In a way this dynamic political and historical making and unmaking of the artefacts, also works to both rest and unrest the missing persons of apartheid, disrupting their afterlives but in an attempt to memorialise them. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10566/20990 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | University of the Western Cape | |
| dc.subject | Apartheid era missing persons | |
| dc.subject | Freedom Park | |
| dc.subject | hapo museum | |
| dc.subject | virtual exhibition | |
| dc.subject | memorialisation | |
| dc.title | The forensic, the missing and the memorial: how missing persons of apartheid state sanctioned violence are memorialised through the mediation of the work of the forensic | |
| dc.type | Thesis |