Demitrios Tsafendas: race, madness and the archive

• Main Author: Adams, Zuleiga
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: Demitrios Tsafendas
• Online Access: http://etd.uwc.ac.za/index.php?module=etd&action=viewtitle&id=gen8Srv25Nme4_5989_1365584269

<p>This thesis is concerned with the archival production on the life of Demitrios Tsafendas, the man who assassinated Hendrik Verwoerd on the 6 September 1966. Through an examination of three different archival registers: the colonial, apartheid and post-apartheid, the thesis tracks the parallel construction of race and madness in these archives. This thesis is primarily concerned with the apartheid period in its phase of &lsquo === grand&rsquo === social engineering. The historiography of this period has traditionally focused on the material manifestations of apartheid social policies. As a result we know a lot about how apartheid impacted on people&rsquo === s lives in the social, political and economic domains. The study attempts to demonstrate how Tsafendas&rsquo === life places on the historical agenda the need to examine how apartheid as a form of racial rationalism shifted the interior psychic geographies of people. Tsafendas&rsquo === life unsettles the traditional questions posed by South African historiography. These questions have been concerned with how people&rsquo === s destinies were shaped by class, race or gender. Through an examination of the life of Tsafendas, I hope to ask very different questions than those posed by traditional historiography. This thesis asks: what can &lsquo === madness&rsquo === tell us about apartheid? It makes a case for an examination of creative works on Tsafendas and how these works illuminate the relationship between identity, history and the psyche.</p>