A poetics of redemption: Keith Dietrich's reinvention of the colonial archive

In this article, I question whether it is possible for white artists in a (post-)settler colony such as South Africa, to engage the colonial archive in a redemptive manner. I do so by investigating the visual and discursive strategies employed by Keith Dietrich in three art projects that probe aspec...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Critical arts 2015-12, Vol.29 (sup1), p.116-133
Main Author: van Robbroeck, Lize
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adorno
Aesthetics
Artists
Colonialism
Dietrich
Discourse analysis
mapping
missionary
Redemption
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Summary:In this article, I question whether it is possible for white artists in a (post-)settler colony such as South Africa, to engage the colonial archive in a redemptive manner. I do so by investigating the visual and discursive strategies employed by Keith Dietrich in three art projects that probe aspects of the colonial encounter in South Africa. I ask, via Theodor Adorno and Michel Foucault, whether a redemptive aesthetic rereading of archival materials such as that which Dietrich attempts, is a kind of sublimation and, if so, whether it is accompanied by some form of erasure that empties history of its sufferings. In my analysis of Dietrich's work, I conclude that his acknowledgement and aesthetic transfiguration of the wounding discourses that shaped the colonial past, purge them of their claims to truth and offer a form of redemption that promises no absolution, but redeems through the notion of a shared humanity founded on difference, pain and displacement.
ISSN:0256-0046
1992-6049
DOI:10.1080/02560046.2015.1102263