Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-9pm4c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T20:00:15.143Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Drawing the line: justice and the art of reconciliation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2009

François du Bois
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
Antje du Bois-Pedain
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In conversation with Angela Breidbach, South African artist and film-maker, William Kentridge, speaks about his early interest in art:

I come from a very logical and rational family. My father is a lawyer. I had to establish myself in the world as not just being his son, his child. I had to find a way of arriving at knowledge that was not subject to cross-examination, not subject to legal reasoning.

Kentridge presents artistic and legal practices as being entirely different to each other, yet the creative process of making a drawing, for Kentridge, involves a movement that is partly ‘projection’ and partly ‘reception’ of an emergent image – it has to do with ‘what you recognize as the drawing proceeds’. This act of projection, reception, and hence of recognition, also applies to the event of viewing a drawing, and it is in this context that I discuss the implications of ‘drawing the line’ in all its ambiguity. Drawing a line in the literal sense – as a graphic artist would – is a gesture that may not be subject to legal reasoning (to use Kentridge's phrasing), but at the same time, in the drawing's address to those who view it, the artwork depends upon and anticipates a ground of recognition. It thus sets perimeters to a potential field of response.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Kentridge, William and Breidbach, Angela, William Kentridge Thinking Aloud: Conversations with Angela Breidbach (Johannesburg: David Krut, 2006) at 70.Google Scholar
Vladislavić, Ivan, Willem Boshoff (Johannesburg: David Krut, 2005).Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques, Writing and Difference, trans. Bass, Alan (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1978) at 3–30.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques, Acts of Religion (London: Routledge, 2002) at 230–98.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques, On the Name (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995) at 13–4.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, Peter, Modernism and the Grounds of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) at 91, my emphasis.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hüppauff, Bernd (ed.) War, Violence and the Modern Condition (New York and Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1997) at 47.CrossRef
Derrida, Jacques, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, trans. Dooley, Mark and Hughes, Michael (London and New York: Routledge, 2001) at 49 (emphasis added).Google Scholar
Celan, Paul, Collected Prose, trans. Waldrop, Rosmarie (Manchester: Carcanet, 1986) at 44.Google Scholar
Veitch, Scott (ed.), Law and the Politics of Reconciliation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).
Derrida, Jacques, ‘Declarations of Independence’ (1986) 15 New Political Science 7 at 10.Google Scholar
Walker, Neil and Loughlin, Martin (eds.), The Paradox of Constitutionalism: Constituent Power and Constitutional Form (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
Segal, Lauren (compiler, lead writer and editor), Number Four: The Making of Constitutional Hill (Johannesburg: Penguin, 2006).
Jameson, Fredric, trans. and edited by Taylor, Ronald (London: NLB, 1977) at 190.
Schaap, , ‘Time of Reconciliation’ at 16. Schaap's reference is to Emilios Christodoulidis, ‘“Truth and Reconciliation” as Risks’ (2000) 9 Social and Legal Studies198.Google Scholar
Mandela, Nelson, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (Randburg: Macdonald Purnell, 1994) at 304.Google Scholar
Boshoff, Willem, Licked (Exhibition catalogue. Cape Town: Michael Stevenson Contemporary, 2003), no page number.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques and Tlili, Mustapha (eds.), For Nelson Mandela (New York: Seaver Books, 1987) 13.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Sense and Non-Sense, trans. Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Dreyfus, Patricia Allen (United States: Northwestern University Press, 1964) at 15.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×