The implications of archive destruction for South Africa's democracy and nation-building: Freud, Derrida and Foucault.

Problematic interracial relations remain an important legacy of colonialism and apartheid in South Africa. Nation-building and reconciliation were held up as ideals that the new South Africa was to strive towards as part of the transition to democracy. By highlighting the significant contribution that the archive makes towards achieving a secure national identity and transformation, this paper argues that the deliberate destruction of parts of the archive during the transition to democracy deprived post-apartheid South Africa of a basis on which to know itself and to self-imagine. Using the metaphor of a 'wounded archive', this paper mobilises experiences of political violence victims contained in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission TRC Final Report (1998a) to make sense of the destruction. The paper employs Freudian and Kleinian principles to formulate an understanding of this destruction and is further supported by Derrida and Foucault's ideas on identity, memory and power associated with the nation, national identity and the archive. Finally, it calls for a reanalysis of what happened to the South African nation, a review of the role that the apartheid government played in sanitising its memory to avoid 'phantasied' retaliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]