Violence, Nonviolence, and the Poetics of Space: Robben Island and the Transformation of Humankind

The present talk is derived from a four-book project called "The Genocide and Hope Quartet: Studies in the Architecture of Oppression and the Redemptive Possibilities of Nonviolence." Each of the four books -- Dandi, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Robben Island -- is named after a place of critical importance in the global history of nonviolence and violence in the 20th century, and yet what is signified by each of these places transcends the meaning we attach to each name. In this talk, I shall focus on Robben Island, which earned a reputation as "the world's most notorious penitentiary." Some 2000 of South Africa’s leading political prisoners from the African National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress, most famously Nelson Mandela, were interned there--sometimes for as long as 20 years. Before Robben Island closed shortly after the end of apartheid, and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it had been transformed into "Robben Island University." What happened at Robben Island and how did the story of genocide get transformed into a story of hope?

Register Now