Sandra Young

Bio: Sandra Young is an academic researcher from University of Cape Town. The author has contributed to research in topics: Racism & Narrative. The author has an hindex of 7, co-authored 19 publications receiving 128 citations.

Narrative and Healing in the Hearings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Abstract: I can deal with it only in the form of questions. Do you know, you the truth commissioners, how a temperature feels of between six and eight thousand

Hospitality in a Postapartheid Archive: Reflections on There Was This Goat and the Challenge of Alterity

Abstract: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission helped to reconstitute the South African archive as more open, more self-reflexive, more hospitable to those previously marginalized by poverty and racial injustice, but its disciplinary and ethical framework produced new norms and exclusions. A recent book, There Was This Goat, co-authored by writer Antjie Krog, linguist Nosisi Mpolweni, and psychologist Kopano Ratele, investigates the “incomprehensible” testimony of Mrs. Konile, mother of a murdered ANC activist. In trying to imagine a new public drawn together in the spirit of ubuntu, it raises troubling questions about accommodating alterity. The fragmented nature of the book shows up the impossibility of achieving coherence in the name of hospitality. I reflect on the construction of what seems “strange” within the postapartheid archive and on the role of the archive itself in underwriting particular notions of citizenship and belonging. Greater openness may call for a relinquishing of certainty and sovereignty, and a willingness not to comprehend.

Narrating Colonial Violence and Representing New-World Difference: The Possibilities of Form in Thomas Harriot's A Briefe and True Report

Abstract: In tracing the stories—or “histories,” as sixteenth-century exploration narratives were called—with which expansionist Europe came to know its colonial Other, we see outlines of the habits of thoug...

Early modern geography and the construction of a knowable Africa

Abstract: Africa was integral to the early modern preoccupation with being able to account for the “whole” world in seemingly scholarly fashion. The Africa that took shape in early modern geographies was not imagined in isolation: its cultural geography was linked to other regions of the world in a comparative system that helped to distinguish between the “barbarous” and those “worthy” to be called human, and between the “Southern Nations” and the “Northern People.” It contributed to the emergence of a global south, made explicit through the language of cartography, which allowed early modern readers to gain their bearings in a more complex world. I examine some early scholarly representations of Africa in English, to reflect on the role of textual structure in constructing Africa as an object of knowledge, a place of strangeness and possibility. Editorial interventions transform inherited associations between Africa and “barbarism,” I argue, and between nomadism and “beastliness,” and subject them to new evidentia...

A Soliloquy "Lately Spoken at the African Theatre": Race and the Public Sphere in New York City, 1821

Abstract: In 1821 a small theater opened in New York City, billing itself as the American Theatre but known to most New Yorkers only as the African Theatre. After playing with frequent interruptions, it apparently closed in 1824. Although it was the first African American theater, and although William Brown, its impresario, is known to have authored at least one play, very little is known about the theater, about Brown, or about his lost play. Even Brown’s first name was disputed until recent archival discoveries by George Thompson. In the absence of texts, the African Theater has remained an obscure trace, a scholarly footnote to American literary history.1 On 4 December 1821, however—when the theater was widely known in New York City, and when controversy swirled around it in the newspapers—a new literary periodical, St. Tammany’s Magazine, published a text entitled ‘‘Soliloquy of a Maroon Chief in Jamaica.’’ 2 Its issues now extremely rare, the magazine has been unnoticed by scholars.3 According to its editor’s headnote, the monologue was ‘‘Lately spoken at the African Theatre.’’ Could this text be the earliest surviving work of African American theater? The possibility would be enough to give the monologue tremendous importance to scholars. But the text has more than antiquarian interest. Whatever its origin, and whether or not it was in fact delivered on stage, the monologue is an extraordinary reflection on racial conflict, and on the very idea of race. It may be described as one of the most radical statements on the topic by any American before the Civil War. It explicitly engages the language of scientific racism, which was only then emerging, and it challenges all then-current grounds for claims of

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World.

Abstract: basic research and clinical data in an attempt to derive a cohesive model which explains the behavioral effects of the drug. Johnson is an experimental psychologist, and his work underlies many of the chapters which suggest that lithium decreases the behavioral response to novel external stimuli. He then utilizes this foundation to propose a cognitive model for lithium's anti-manic action, its inhibition of violent impulsivity, and its prophylactic effects in recurrent depression. Previous formulations which were clinically based, such as that of Mabel Blake Cohen and her associates, stressed the primacy of depression and noted the \"manic defense\" as an attempt to ward off intolerable depression. In direct contrast, Johnson views mania as the primary disturbance in bipolar disorder. He considers depression in bipolar disease as an over-zealous homeostatic inhibitory responsf to a maniaassociated cognitive overload. Consistent with this, he believes, lit lum exerts its anti-manic effect by decreasing cognitive processing in a manner analogous to his animal studies. Johnson also suggests that lithium exerts its prophylactic effect in recurrent depressions by treating subclinical mania. These concepts are supported by the work of Johnson's associate, Kukopulos, to whom the book is dedicated. The bulk of the research which describes the cognitive disturbance in mania is complex, however, and uncomfortably open to multiple interpretations. Recognized as a preliminary effort, Johnson's formulation may help to guide further research. Although Johnson clearly traces lithium actions through a broad range of subjects, his discussion of the neurophysiological aspects of this drug is notably spotty. In particular, Johnson ignores the work of Svensson, DeMontigny, Aghajanian, and others who suggest that serotonergic systems may play an important role in the antidepressant actions of lithium. As a result, he fails to discuss one of the most important current uses of lithium: as an agent used in conjunction with antidepressant medications to increase treatment response in medication-resistant forms of depression. Lithium augmentation of antidepressant medication also challenges the formulation presented by Johnson. This formulation suggests that lithium should have no therapeutic value in patients, such as those with endogenous depression, who already \"under-process\" cognitive information. The omission of lithium augmentation in depression is clearly unfortunate in this text. Overall, this volume demonstrates the benefits of a single-authored text. It it clearly organized and readable. The bibliography is also broad and useful. In this book, Johnson primarily addresses a research audience, and his model seems designed to stimulate thought rather than to improve clinical technique. In this capacity, his book will be of most interest to behavioral psychologists. Other books, focusing purely on clinical data, may be more useful to clinicians. Nevertheless, the clear organization, the large bibliography, and the thoughtful presentation may make this text a useful addition to a clinical library as well.

The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge

Abstract: What is the meaning of Africa and of being African? What is and what is not African philosophy? Is philosophy part of Africanism ? These are the kind of fundamental questions which this book addresses. North America: Indiana U Press

Truth and Power

Abstract: Reference EPFL-ARTICLE-223260View record in Web of Science Record created on 2016-11-21, modified on 2016-11-21