Memories of a Modernity to be

Abstract

Truth and reconciliation are decisive factors in contemporary South African culture. 'Memories of modernity' connote two parallel tendencies in literature and other forms of mediated fiction. Firstly, a yearning to link back to an idealized pre-apartheid past – often depicted and interpreted as an embryonic modernity which is brutally interrupted. Secondly, the attempt to come to grips with this alleged parenthesis: the investigation of the recent past by experimental means.