Summer School 2013 "Situating Media" - Participants
Anne Fleckstein (Halle)
Media and Technologies of Truth in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission
From 1996 to 2002, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission South Africa (TRC) launched a public national process of coming to terms with the past which was to mark the end of the apartheid regime and the beginning of a new democratic South Africa. The Ph.D. project examines which procedures, technologies and media contribute to the constitution, authorization and transmission of historical knowledge in the TRC. It seeks, thus, to trace the conditions of media and cultural technologies of political transitions. Based on the analysis of TRC documents, videos and interviews, the project acts on the distinction of two domains: the visible and the invisible space, i.e. procedures which took place in the public visible domain and internal procedures "behind the scenes". The media and technologies of truth to be analysed comprehend administrative procedures, juridical practices, technical data processing and cultural technologies, which form the conditions for the "truth-speaking" in the hearing halls, the establishment of "cases" and "acts" behind the scenes, the various transmissions of stories up to the final report of the TRC, and the actions of the persons involved. These conditions also include technologies like e.g. enumerating, witnessing, selecting, deleting, translating, interrogating, advocating or adjudicating, as well as material dispositifs (microphone, data-base, questionnaires et al.).
The common perception of the South African truth commission as having been a singular historical turning point, which was particularly promoted through the public hearings, is to be complemented by the significance of administrative, technical and juridical procedures for the constitution of a "new" historiography during a political transition, which places the Commission in an assemblage of historical continuities.
Anne Fleckstein
studied Cultural Studies and German Literature in Berlin and Lyon. She worked in foreign cultural affairs (Goethe Institute, French Embassy etc.) for a couple of years, before starting her Ph.D. at the DFG Research Training Group "Mediale Historiographien" (Media of History – History of Media) in Erfurt/Weimar/Jena. Since October 2012, she is a Ph.D. fellow of the International Max Planck Research School on "Retaliation, Mediation and Punishment (REMEP)" / Graduate School "Societies and Cultures in Motion" (GSCM) at the Max Planck Institute for Anthropological Research / Martin Luther Universität in Halle.
Her research interests are: transitional justice, Southern Africa, media studies, cultural studies, law and media, historiography and media, anthropology of media.
Recent Publications
2012: “Leben ausgraben. Exhumierungen als Momente der Wiederbelebung im Post-Apartheid-Südafrika,” in: Ulrike Hanstein, Anika Höppner, Jana Mangold (ed.), Re-Animationen. Szenen des Auf- und Ablebens in Kunst, Literatur und Geschichtsschreibung, Berlin: Böhlau, 243–258.
2010: “‘So help me God.’ Bezeugen in der südafrikanischen Wahrheitskommission,” in: Sybille Krämer, Sibylle Schmidt, Ramon Voges (ed.), Politik der Zeugenschaft. Zur Kritik einer Wissenspraxis, Bielefeld: transcript, 311–330.