Re-imagining South Africa via a passage to India: M.K. Jeffreys's archive of the Indian Ocean world
Date
2007
Authors
Samuelson M.
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Abstract
Archivist, essayist and poet, M.K. Jeffreys produced an evocative archive on the Cape's location and functioning within the Indian Ocean world. This article traces the passages by way of which this archive was produced and explores the implications of this archive for our present. It shows how jeffreys's epistolary relationship with the first Indian Agent to South Aftica, Srinivasa Sastri, led to re-conceptualisations of her subjectivity as a white South African, and to the reclaiming of her previously denied South Asian ancestry. Exploring the circuitous, transoceanic route via which her new conceptions of South Aftican identities and histories emerged, it concludes by engaging with Jeffreys's inscriptions of Cape slavery, Islam and creolisation.
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Social Dynamics
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33
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