‘Why was she born into this white skin?’ Curriculum Making for Remembrance as Critical Learning in Postconflict Societies

Abstract

South Africa is essentially a traumatised society in which remembrance of the past evokes many different emotions. This traumatised state is partly the result of the contradicting and confusing remembrances that individuals have of the past and how these translate into the present. This article proposes that remembrance should not be reduced to a strategic practice of viewing the past as a reconciliatory possibility for the future. Instead it proposes the past be seen as an opportunity for a critical form of learning. This requires attention to questions such as: How do we need to view curriculum to do justice to the notion of remembrance as critical learning? What method should we use to realise the ideals of critical learning of this kind? In considering these questions, the memory narratives of two students were explored and theorised in terms of intracategorical complexity. I argue that curriculum making for remembrance as critical learning could begin with eliciting individual memories through memory work and disrupting these remembrances through intersectionality and intracategorical complexity.

Keywords: curriculum making, postconflict society, remembrance, memory work, intersectionality