Whiteness Just Isn't What It Used To Be: White Identity in a Changing South Africa

Melissa Steyn

aug 2001 · State University of New York Press

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Winner of the 2002 Outstanding Book Award presented by the International and Intercultural Communication Division of the National Communication Association

The election of 1994, which heralded the demise of Apartheid as a legally enforced institutionalization of "whiteness," disconnected the prior moorings of social identity for most South Africans, whatever their political persuasion. In one of the most profound collective psychological experiences of the contemporary world, South Africans are renegotiating the meaning of their social positionalities. In this book, Melissa Steyn, herself a white South African, grapples with what it means to be white, reflecting on events in her past that still resonate with her today. Her research includes discourse with more than fifty white South Africans who are faced with reinterpreting their old selves in the light of new knowledge and possibilities. Framed within current debates of postcolonialism and postmodernism, "Whiteness Just Isn't What It Used To Be" explores how the changes in South Africa's social and political structure are changing the white population's identity and sense of self.

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Melissa Steyn is Director of the Professional Communication Unit at the University of Cape Town and the coeditor of Cultural Synergy in South Africa: Weaving Strands of Africa and Europe.