Whiteness Just Isn't What Is Used to Be: White Identity in a Changing South Africa (Suny Series, Interruptions: Border Testimony(ies) and Critic)

Melissa Steyn

ISBN 10: 0791450805 / ISBN 13: 9780791450802

Published by State University of New York Press August 2001, 2001

About this Item

SUNY Press, 2001. Very Good/No Jacket. Trade paperback with white covers. 228 pp including index.

Seller Inventory # 136184

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Whiteness Just Isn't What Is Used to Be: White Identity in a Changing South Africa (Suny Series, Interruptions: Border Testimony(ies) and Critic)
• Publisher: State University of New York Press August 2001
• Publication Date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0791450805
• ISBN 13: 9780791450802
• Binding: Trade Paperback
• Condition: Used - Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
• Seller catalogs:
  • Market Import

About this title

Synopsis

Narratively explores how the changes in South Africa's social and political structure are changing the white population's identity and sense of self.

Winner of the 2002 Outstanding Book Award presented by the International and Intercultural Communication Division of the National Communication Association

The election of 1994, which heralded the demise of Apartheid as a legally enforced institutionalization of "whiteness," disconnected the prior moorings of social identity for most South Africans, whatever their political persuasion. In one of the most profound collective psychological experiences of the contemporary world, South Africans are renegotiating the meaning of their social positionalities. In this book, Melissa Steyn, herself a white South African, grapples with what it means to be white, reflecting on events in her past that still resonate with her today. Her research includes discourse with more than fifty white South Africans who are faced with reinterpreting their old selves in the light of new knowledge and possibilities. Framed within current debates of postcolonialism and postmodernism, "Whiteness Just Isn't What It Used To Be" explores how the changes in South Africa's social and political structure are changing the white population's identity and sense of self.

About the Author

Melissa Steyn is Director of the Professional Communication Unit at the University of Cape Town and the coeditor of Cultural Synergy in South Africa: Weaving Strands of Africa and Europe.