Critical Arts

Introduction

Keyan G Tomaselli — 2004-11-30

The Healing Land: Research Methods in Kalahari Communities

Vanessa McLennan-Dodd — 2004-11-30

The Healing Land (Isaacson, 2001a) is a vivid, experiential account of Rupert Isaacson's journey towards personal and community healing among the Khomani Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert in South Africa. This paper provides a detailed analysis of The Healing Land in relation to Isaacson's research methodology and interaction with the Khomani, examining how the story he tells is influenced and shaped by his own perceptions and experiences. This article echoes the journey of auto-ethnography from the inter- to the intra-personal. Factual, text-based information on the Khomani and a synopsis of The Healing Land leads to the incorporation of the author's voice into the article, as she refers to personal interviews conducted during research on the book, and shares inner reflections on the article's conclusion.

Critical Arts Vol.18(2) 2004: 3-30

Hitting the Hot Spots: Literary Tourism as a Research Field with Particular Reference to KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Lindy Stiebel — 2004-11-30

Literary tourism is a new field in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, and South Africa more generally. Whilst in England, the interested reader/traveller can buy books on Hardy's Wessex, Dickens's London and Shakespeare's Stratford-on-Avon; show literature students and the public generally an assortment of films on places associated with important writers, and even go on guided walks through famous ‘literary' places like Wordsworth's Lake District; there is very little of the same for the South African literature researcher–or indeed literary fan. KwaZulu-Natal is a particularly rich province culturally speaking, offering a wide range of writers both black and white, male and female, writing in English and Zulu predominantly–Alan Paton, Roy Campbell, Lewis Nkosi, Lauretta Ngcobo, Daphne Rooke to mention but a few. Efforts by literary scholars to encourage literary tourism in this fertile area inevitably lead one to consider a research agenda; in my case this has a threefold purpose involving firstly, the creation of a literary archive of local writers both past and present; secondly, the recording of selected writers and their works on film, and thirdly, the establishment of a ‘literary map' of the region on website. Such a research agenda carries with it complex questions: how to define a ‘local' writer? How to understand the uses a writer makes of place? Who should be featured and why? How do readers' constructed places interface with ‘real' places? What could the impact of literary tourism be? This paper engages with some of these questions and attempts to suggest a possible research agenda that has exciting possibilities within KwaZulu-Natal, and which could offer a potential framework for similar literary tourism projects in other provinces of South Africa in the future.

Critical Arts Vol.18(2) 2004: 31-44

Representations and Objections: Geert Van Kesteren and the 13th International Aids Conference, Durban, 2000

Alexandra von Stauss — 2004-11-30

On the African continent, the HIV/AIDS pandemic has had significant effects on the organisation of life across economic, political and social structures. As a social phenomenon, HIV/AIDS is of crucial concern, regionally as well as globally. While the HIV/AIDS pandemic “in industrial and postindustrial societies is believed to be complex, intellectually and politically contested, and theoretically interesting, Third World epidemics are seen to be simple material disasters” (Treichler, 1999, p. 7). This brings to the fore significant issues to do with the representation of AIDS in Africa.

Critical Arts Vol.18(2) 2004: 45-62

Book Review: Brian McNair, An Introduction to Political Communication (3rd edition), London: Routledge, 2003, ISBN 0415307082, 272pp.

Phil Joffe — 2004-11-30

Book Review: Ronald Segal. Islam's Black Slaves: A History of Africa's other Black Diaspora. London: Atlantic Books, 2003, ISBN 190380981, xi + 273pp. Notes, Index, References, Maps.

Bhekimpilo Sibanda — 2004-11-30

Film Review: Seeing is Believing: Handicams, Human Rights and the News. Directed by Katerina Cizek and Peter Wintonick, 2002, 58 minutes. First Run/Icarus Films. Colour.

Sean Jacobs — 2004-11-30