Challenging the implicated subject: Bringing memory activism into the South African university classroom

Abstract

In this article, I will explore the value of engaging with the intersections between memory studies scholarship and memory activism within the university classroom. I will do so by documenting the approach I took to teaching Michael Rothberg’ s theory of the implicated subject to South African university graduate students. I introduced the students to the implicated subject within the framework provided by two interconnected courses which make connections between histories of antisemitism, the Holocaust, colonialism and gender oppression. Together, the courses required the students to explore their positionality, and contemplate what they can do to address global challenges, related to issues such as antisemitism and racism. To prompt their reflections, I provided the students with a range of case studies that explored, among other things, white South African students’ responses to the #FeesMustFall protests, and complex intersections between South African antisemitism and racism in a hate speech case. I also gave them creative assignments which provided them with the opportunity to explore their roles as curators and memory activists. Apart from documenting my approaches of teaching and assessment, I also examine a poem, produced by one of the students, which highlights how the students have come to apply memory activism and scholarship in their everyday lives.

In their introduction to The Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism, Yifat Gutman and Wüstenberg (2023) define memory activism as the ‘strategic commemoration of a contested past to achieve mnemonic or political change by working outside state channels’ (p. 5, italics in the original). By operating at the grassroots level, as opposed to through state channels that may threaten to silence them, memory activists ‘target memory as the crucial way of intervening in the process of societal change from below’ (Gutman and Wüstenberg, 2023: 6, italics in the original). The growth of memory activism and its impact on the field of memory studies has received extensive attention in works such as the handbook, and a special edition of Memory Studies entitled Remembering activism: Explorations in the Memory-Activism Nexus and edited by Samuel Merrill and Anne Rigney (2024). A central concern of these works is the ‘activist turn’ (see Chidgey, 2023, 2024; Gutman and Wüstenberg, 2023; Rigney, 2023) in memory studies. In particular, Red Chidgey’s (2024) article in the special issue, ‘Activist turns: The (in)compatibility of scholarship and transformative activism’, probes the possibilities and limitations of this phenomenon. Building on her study of intersectionality in the context of memory activism, Chidgey (2024) argues that integrating memory activism into memory studies is valuable because it can create debates, experiments and methods which could aid in efforts to ‘elaborate and strengthen the transformative aspects of memory practices for a wider social good’ (p. 1214). Consequently, she proposes that memory scholars need to explore how to ‘nurture a social justice orientation through their work’ (Chidgey, 2024: 1214).

Notably, the reflections provided by Gutman and Wüstenberg and Chidgey focus primarily on how intersections between memory activism and memory studies can influence academic research and scholarship. They do not consider in detail how these intersections can influence humanities education in university classrooms. Chidgey gestures briefly to bell hooks’s (1994) earlier work in Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom which provides a blueprint to begin thinking about how developing teaching pedagogies which involve memory activism can transform the classroom into a revolutionary space. Yet, Chidgey does not follow this line of inquiry further. In The handbook, the chapters which focus on memory activism education do so primarily by focusing on museum sites and their practices (see Lehrer, 2023; Nates and Herman, 2023; Wawryzniak, 2023). Others such as Katrin Antweiler (2019, 2023) similarly use museum spaces to examine, for instance, how memory education in the German context can function as a tool of ‘governmentality’ (p. 55) by fostering ‘the core values of liberal democracy and [aiming] to create a sense of widely shared responsibility for society and the well-being of humanity’ (p. 57).

Studies of museums as spaces of memory activism are significant. However, further explorations of how connections between memory activism and memory studies can be utilized in the university classroom are crucial. Although their research is focused within the sphere of memory education within schools, Gensburger and Lefranc (2020) emphasize this significance when they observe that in societies experiencing internal violent conflict, scholarly spaces can use ‘memorial tools’ (p. 28) to create opportunities for ‘learning conflict resolution techniques to help create peaceful societies’ (p. 28). Research that does examine how these opportunities occur at the interface between memory activism and memory studies at university level, often employs Michael Rothberg’s (2009) theory of multidirectional memory as a point of departure. Rothberg’s theory which engages with the ‘intercultural dynamic’ (p. 3) between different histories of trauma and oppression has most explicitly been discussed as a pedagogical framework in ‘Memory in action: Reflections on multidirectionality’s possibilities in the classroom’. In this article, Barr et al. (2023) discuss how they have taught multidirectional memory in three different American undergraduate classrooms and institutions. Although they do not discuss their teaching in relation to memory activism, it is present in how they use the theory to bring ‘global resistance movements into conversation with one another in a way that intellectually challenges but, ultimately, inspires students’ (Barr et al., 2023: 1672).

A similar sentiment has guided my teaching of Rothberg’s theory of implicated subjectivity. In his seminal work The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators, Rothberg (2019) introduces the implicated subject as an individual who is ‘neither a victim nor a perpetrator, but rather a participant in histories and social formations that generate the positions of victim and perpetrator, and yet in which most people do not occupy such clear-cut roles’ (p. 10). This implies that although they do not possess the psychology of the perpetrator, implicated subjects benefit from the systems of power and privilege which are developed through regimes of perpetration. Because they are implicated in these systems, Rothberg (2019) suggests that ‘implicated subjects help propagate the legacies of historical violence and prop up the structures of inequality that mar the present’ (p. 10).

My engagement with implicated subjectivity emerged in my development of the course material and pedagogy for the course ‘Exploring Memory and Representation: Studies in Genocide and Colonialism’ which I taught in my capacity as a South African educator within the field of English Literature between the years 2022 and 2025. This course was unique because it was connected to an ongoing international interdisciplinary online course entitled ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression: Connecting the Conversations between Antisemitism, the Holocaust Colonialism and Gender’. ¹ ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ brings together educators and graduate students from South Africa, the United Kingdom, Europe, and, occasionally, the United States. As its title implies, this course aims to promote new teaching and thinking about the relationship between four distinct, yet overlapping phenomena: antisemitism, the Holocaust, colonialism and gender oppression. In connecting these phenomena, it uses them as a framework to explore hate and othering in their historical and contemporary manifestations. ‘Exploring Memory and Representation’ served as the in-person component of the course. It expanded on the topics covered in the online course and connected them to our discipline. It also brought further emphasis to our local context, and the African continent more broadly by focusing on literature produced in Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

As the anchor for the ‘Exploring Memory and Representation’ course, ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ was initially conceived under the auspices of the Open Society University Network (OSUN) which was relaunched in 2025 under the name Global Higher Education Alliance for the 21st Century (GHEA21). In its initial conception, OSUN aimed to ‘prepare students from diverse geographies and backgrounds, through rigorous liberal arts and sciences education, to address global challenges as thoughtful and engaged citizens’ (Open Society University Network (OSUN), 2020). This mission statement itself signals how multidirectional memory, the implicated subject and memory activism inform the course. By facilitating dialogues between students from diverse geographical backgrounds, ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ allows them to collectively contemplate, in a multidirectional fashion, how the different perspectives they are exposed to either extend or challenge their understandings of the histories and ‘global challenges’ they encounter in the course. Through these interactions, they also reflect on their own social, cultural and political positions and how they influence their efforts to be ‘thoughtful and engaged citizens’. It is these core concerns that led me into centring the implicated subject and memory activism as the focus in my accompanying ‘Memory and Representation’ classes.

In this article, I employ a discussion of how I approached teaching the implicated subject to the South African students. In doing so, I aim to demonstrate how engaging with the intersections between memory activism and memory studies through pedagogy, helps students enact their roles as ‘thoughtful and engaged citizens’. I begin by further outlining both courses, and their respective pedagogies and assessments. I then discuss my own positionality as an educator, highlighting how it informed the content of my lectures, and my teaching approach. Following this, I outline how I first introduced the implicated subject by applying it to the students’ own contemporary realities through reflections on the positionality of white South African student activists during the 2015–2016 #FeesMustFall movement. I then show how I integrated the topics encountered in the ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ course into a discussion of the implicated subject via a South African case study which relates the topics of antisemitism, Holocaust memory and memory activism to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Building on the case study, I then document how we explored issues of empathy and reconciliation in light of the turbulent histories of both the conflict and South Africa. I conclude the article by analyzing a published poem, produced by one of the South African students, which showcases how the lessons learned across the ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ and ‘Memory and Representation’ courses have encouraged the students to explore their positionality as a ‘trusted and engaged citizens’ and prospective changemakers.

Establishing the ‘Cultures of hate and oppression’ and ‘Memory and representation’ courses

Running as a semester course over a period of 3 months, the 2022–2025 iterations of the ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ course opened each week with a 30- to 40-minute lecture presented by lecturers from the course’s partner institutions. These partners were Central European University (CEU), Birkbeck, University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and my institution, the University of the Witwatersrand. I provided the course’s introductory lecture which established multidirectional memory as a framework to connect the different historical memories the students would encounter in the course. The lectures which followed mine delved into historical and contemporary debates around antisemitism as a form of racism and the intersections and distinctions between antisemitism and antizionism. The topic of colonialism was covered by exploring the connections between Jews and colonialism, comparisons between the Holocaust and the Palestinian Nakba, and the legacies of Hannah Arendt’s (1951) seminal work Origins of Totalitarianism. The intersectional aspects of the course emerged in sessions which explored the marginalization of women within Holocaust narratives, and examined how gender became an object of hate. The course also incorporated topics such as debates in researching Holocaust history, the evolution of hate studies, and understanding genocide in a legal context.

After each lecture, the students were assigned to different Zoom breakout rooms where they, together with the students from the other institutions, were tasked with answering a set of questions based on the lecture content. Following a plenary session where they discussed their findings with the instructor, the students returned to the breakout rooms to plan an assigned group project. In 2023, ² this project involved the students designing museum panels based on one of the themes of the course. From 2024 to 2025, it took the form of podcasts which the students similarly developed in relation to these themes. While the group project acted as the main mode of assessment for the ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ course, it also placed emphasis on memory activism. It required the students to not only make the scholarship they were exposed to accessible to the general public, but also to inspire their audiences to be engaged as activists who aim to address the wrongs of the historical past and present.

The ‘Memory and Representation’ course was born out of the need to, on one hand, have a class to extend the topics and discussions encountered in the ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ course. On the other, it served a practical function. Due to departmental and institutional regulations, the South African students were unable to take ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ as a credit-bearing course. Therefore, it was necessary to connect the course to an in-person module taught within the university’s English Literature department. Rather than inventing a new course, we took a pre-existing course and reshaped it to complement the ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ course. The course was ‘Theory of Literature’, a module initially designed to introduce students to the theoretical work of figures such as Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, and Julia Kristeva. While ensuring that literary theory remained a focus in the course, ‘Memory and Representation’ shifted its emphasis to engage with theories and texts that could be related to the ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ course. The revamped course showed the students how theory could be applied beyond the literary text, to ‘real world’ contexts and concerns. Via discussion-based lectures, the ‘Memory and Representation’ classes expanded further on multidirectional memory, and introduced the students to the implicated subject. For our discussions, I selected case studies that related the content of the ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ course to the South African context, identifying their relevance within our own society. The chosen case studies also helped the students see how the theories could be utilized to make productive contributions to bettering communities and societies.

My colleague, who taught on both courses with me, used her classes to expand on Origins of Totalitarianism, focusing on Arendt’s critique of Joseph Conrad’s (2020[1899]) Heart of Darkness, and the connections between her writings and Giorgio Agamben’s (1998) concepts of ‘the camp’ and ‘bare life’. In the course’s early years, Cynthia Ozick’s (2021) Antiquities was taught by a fellow colleague to introduce the students to Paul Ricour’s (1984[1983]) theoretical work in Time and Narrative. More recently this text was replaced with South African novelist Antjie Krog’s (2009[1998]) Country of My Skull which I taught to the students. Krog’s novel grapples with her experiences as a journalist covering South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings, while also struggling with her own positionality as a white Afrikaner woman in post-apartheid South Africa. My classes on the novel were used to introduce the students to trauma theory by relating the text to the work of Cathy Caruth, Dori Laub, Elaine Scarry, and Frantz Fanon. Another colleague taught Zimbabwean novelist Yvonne Vera’s (2002) The Stone Virgins. Via an analysis of Vera’s novel, which details the plight of two sisters living in post-liberation Zimbabwe, my colleague invited the students to engage in critiques of trauma theory, contemplating both its strengths and limitations. The course concluded with a colleague from German Studies teaching Uwe Timm’s (2005 [1981]) Morenga which is set during the period of the Herero-Nama war in German Southwest Africa, presenting the narrative of Morenga, the leader of the Nama people. When taught together, the three texts emphasized further how the issues explored in the ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ course could translate to an African context.

In formulating the assessments for ‘Memory and Representation’, we often drew on the pedagogical approaches applied in the ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ course as we alternated between conventional essays and creative assignments. In 2023, the students were tasked with developing individual museum panels. These could either extend or differ from the panels they created through their group work in the ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ course. They would then analyze the panels in an essay format, using multidirectional memory and/or the implicated subject as a framework. In the course’s most recent iteration, the students were required to write a museum exhibition proposal, based on the narratives and themes they encountered in their reading of either Country of My Skull or The Stone Virgins. They were then asked to apply one or more of the trauma theorists they studied in creating the content of the exhibition. In examining how the students applied the theory to their creations, my colleagues and I ensured that the academic focus remained present. Yet, we also allowed the students to reflect on how these creations could have a valuable impact within their communities and society. We did this by asking them to consider the question of audience reception. Through their interactions with the theories and the texts, the students were required to consider which audiences their panels/exhibitions would be aimed at and why. They were also asked to articulate the message they would want to impart on their audience, and how they would do so. In doing this, they occupied the roles of both museum curators and memory activists.

Establishing the educator as a figure of complex implication

Before elaborating on my approach to teaching on the implicated subject in the ‘Memory and Representation’ classes, it is important to establish my own positionality as an educator. In one of the few studies to engage with the implicated subject in a teaching context, Teresa Strong-Wilson (2021) observes that educators ‘teach autobiographically’ (p. 154). This autobiographical approach may emerge through an explicit integration of an educator’s personal experiences into their teaching (Strong-Wilson, 2021: 154). It may also occur implicitly through the educator’s ‘autobiographical preoccupation with the subject’ (Strong-Wilson, 2021: 154, italics in the original). To an extent, both of these approaches informed my teaching. I am a white, South African Jew who spent the early years of his life in Israel, prior to moving to South Africa permanently. While I do not visit Israel often, I still have close familial ties to the country. I also have prominent anti-apartheid activists on the South-African side of my family. I believe the ideals they followed have been integral to developing my own.

These different facets of my identity position me as a figure of ‘complex implication’, a term Rothberg (2019) uses to refer to implicated subjects who occupy a dual role, the binary of which is shaped through the ‘coexistence of different relations to past and present injustices’ (p. 8). A figure who is implicated in acts of perpetration in the present may, in this case, be a descendent of a history of victimhood. In relation to Jewish identity, Rothberg reflects on ‘complex implication’ in two chapters of The Implicated Subject. In ‘Progress, Progression, Procession: William Kentridge’s Implicated Aesthetic’, Rothberg employs a study of South African artist Willian Kentridge and Michael Godby (1991) Drawings for Projection series to assess the positionality of South African Jews both during apartheid and in post-apartheid South Africa. Following Kentridge (quoted in Belasco, 2001) and Claudia Braude (2001), he suggests that South African Jews occupy a liminal space in which they are assimilated because of their whiteness. However, they are also marginalized through their connection to an extensive history of Jewish suffering, including under the early days of Afrikaner nationalism (see Braude, 2001: xliv, Kentridge quoted in Belasco, 2001: 35, Rothberg, 2019: 111). In ‘From Gaza to Warsaw: Multidirectional Memory and the Perpetuator’, Rothberg focuses on how Holocaust memory has been evoked to motivate the actions of the Israeli state, while also critiquing problematic comparisons that have been made between the Israeli government and the Third Reich. In turn, he examines how Jews who occupy the role of the victim in the context of the Holocaust, are implicated in the government’s actions by virtue of Israel’s identification as a Jewish homeland.

In reading these chapters, I have found that I relate to many of the concerns Rothberg raises. As both a Holocaust scholar and a Jew, I feel a deep connection to Jewish histories of victimization and persecution. I am, however, aware of my position of privilege as both a white South African Jew and an Israeli who is continuously wrestling with difficult feelings towards the Israeli government’s actions, specifically after the events of 7 October, and the resulting Gaza war. My family’s history of anti-apartheid activism complicates my positionality further. The activities of Jewish anti-apartheid activists were significant in fighting against the laws of apartheid. However, while viewing my family’s actions with pride, I remain aware of Steve Biko’s (2005[1972]) observations on white liberalism in his essay ‘The Totality of White Power in South Africa’. In this essay, Biko (2005[1972]) argues that white liberals considered themselves to be ‘self-appointed trustees of black interests’ (p. 65) and viewed themselves as ‘black souls wrapped up in white skins’ (p. 65). For Biko (2005[1972]), this alleged empathetic connection between white liberals and Black South Africans was problematic because the possibility of ‘total identification with an oppressed group that forces one group to enjoy privilege and to live on the sweat of another, is impossible’ (p. 67). Biko’s words have left me with complex feelings about my family’s activist history, as well as my own identification as a white liberal. In the present moment, they have caused me to question how I can navigate this position in ways which show empathy and support towards oppressed groups, while acknowledging the differing identities and histories from which we stem. I believe that the range of feelings and questions that have arisen as I have reflected on my position as a figure of ‘complex implication’ have not only informed the content I have delivered to the students in our ‘Memory and Representation’ classes, but also my efforts to get them to (as Strong-Wilson puts it in her book’s title) move from being ‘implicated subjects to concerned subjects’.

Teaching the implicated subject in the context of #FeesMustFall

In the early months of 2015, students at the University of Cape Town (UCT) formed a protest movement that would have a lasting impact on the evolution of South African higher education. The #RhodesMustFall student movement was formed with the aim of getting a statue of Cecil John Rhodes, the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony in the late 1800s, removed from the university campus. These protests were motivated by a desire to dispel the statue of a figure associated with histories of colonialism and racism, and a need to address how legacies of colonialism and apartheid continued to inform the structures and curriculums of South African universities, years after apartheid’s end. They prompted a nationwide call to dismantle systems of oppression within higher education, and decolonize university curriculums, bringing Black South African voices to the forefront. These protests inspired the formation of the #FeesMustFall student movement in late 2015 and 2016. This movement was initially developed with the aim of fighting against university fee increases and for increased government funding to South African universities. Yet, the protest activities it inspired further highlighted the continued social, economic and educational marginalization of Black South Africans in university spaces, as well as the desperate need to decolonize these spaces. South African universities have not had protests which have reached the heights of the #FeesMustFall movement protests in recent years. Yet, their after-effects have continued to inform the South African university experience.

The influence of #FeesMustFall remained present and familiar for the students who took the ‘Memory and Representation’ course. The struggles the leaders of the Fallist movement fought against continue to inform the lived realities of many Black South African university students. At the beginning of each academic year, in-person classes are often disrupted by protests or threats of protests facilitated to draw attention to the plight of students who have been excluded from registering for their degrees due to their inability to pay the required fees. In each year the course was taught, the student cohort, though small, stemmed from a diverse range of racial, cultural and religious backgrounds. This meant they experienced the protest activity from a range of different perspectives. Keeping both these perspectives and my reflections on my own white liberalism in mind, I chose to use the case study of #FeesMustFall to begin exploring the nature of positionality in post-apartheid South Africa.

In our class discussions, the students and I examined the positionality of white South African university students during the protests. It would have been easy to discuss the white South African students who distanced themselves from the movement, implicating themselves in the country’s discourses of white privilege. However, with Biko’s words in mind, I chose to complicate this matter by discussing white South African student activists who participated in the #FeesMustFall protests. These students partook in what Jennifer Noji and Rothberg (2023) refer to as ‘implicated memory activism’ (p. 80), a term which encompasses how implicated subjects, who take on the role of activists, engage with the past and present injustices they are implicated in to shape their activism and facilitate social change (p. 80). Taking my cue from Rothberg’s (see 2019: 2–10; Noji and Rothberg, 2023: 80–86) study of activist responses to the murder of African-American teenager Trayvon Martin, I asked the students to consider whether it is effective for white students to engage in ‘implicated memory activism’, and where the limitations with this initiative may be. In a news clip (News24, 2016) I shared with them, two white #FeesMustFall protesters are seen arguing with a news reporter about the significance of the protests. The first protester claims that as white people, they ‘understand what colonialism has taught us’ (News24, 2016: 01:02) and ‘how ****** up white people are’ (News24, 2016: 01:03). When the reporter asks the protester if that is not a generalization, the second protester responds ‘well you’re white so you wouldn’t understand’ (News24, 2016: 01:08). Based on the clip, I asked the students to consider if the protesters could ever fully understand the impact of colonialism and apartheid, and whether their claim to do so is not, in fact, harmful to the cause. The protesters in the clip appear to see themselves as removed from the realities of whiteness, and the privileges it denotes. By not acknowledging their position of implication, I queried, are they genuinely showing their allegiance to the cause? Or are they appropriating in a way which allows them to portray an activist identity which may be performative and inauthentic?

I contrasted the clip with statements made in a news article written by Timothy Wolff-Piggott (2015), another white student activist who was a student at UCT during the 2015 #FeesMustFall protests. In the article, Wolff-Piggott documents an encounter between himself, his fellow #FeesMustFall protesters, and riot police who were there to apprehend the protesters who had arrived on the grounds of Parliament, determined to have their voices heard by the South African government. He depicts a scene of violence involving stun grenades and violence targeted at Black students. Contrasting their experiences, Wolff-Piggott (2015) notes that as a white male, he was able to ‘break from the body of students and move among the officers unimpeded’ (n.p.). This leads him to contemplate his position as an implicated subject, both as a beneficiary of systems of colonialism and apartheid, and within the context of the #FeesMustFall protest culture. He refers, for instance, to an incident during the #RhodesMustFall protests where white student protesters accompanied Black student protestors to Rondebosch police station, and acted as their human shields, protecting them from police violence. He observes how the social media commentary on this incident focused on celebrating the heroism of the white student protesters, erasing the traumatic experiences of the Black student protestors (Wolff-Piggott, 2015: n.p.). Contemplating this, Wolff-Piggott expresses his desire to stand up against Black oppression, while also acknowledging how he is implicated in the systems which produce it. While describing privilege as something which ‘deeply implicates [him] and stunts [his] capacity for humanity’ (Wolff-Piggott, 2015: n.p.), he also recognizes how it limits his understanding of lived experiences of racism. Despite this, he observes that he can use his privilege in ‘strategically useful ways’ (Wolff-Piggott, 2015: n.p.) to help combat racial injustices.

In our discussion, the students and I observed how Wolff-Piggott’s article represents a more effective approach to ‘implicated memory activism’. This is because Wolff-Piggott does not distance himself from his whiteness, and clearly differentiates himself from the Black student protesters. By openly recognizing his role as an implicated subject and his limitations, he is also able to establish a form of (what Rothberg terms) ‘differentiated solidarity’ (2019: 26). He does so by acknowledging difference, while still searching for ways to productively help his fellow students through the identity he inhabits, as well as possible points of empathy and connection. Differentiating between these approaches to activism prompted the students to question how they themselves should negotiate their position of implication and the kinds of truths and difficulties they may encounter in this process of negotiation. This became a valuable point of departure through which to relate our classes to the concerns of the ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ course.

The case of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and Bongani Masuku: Engaging with Holocaust memory, apartheid memory and the Gaza War

The sections of the ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ course which impacted the students most, and lead to the greatest reflections on their positionality, were those which focused on antisemitism and antizionism and the broader Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Given the significance and relevance of these topics in the ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ course, I chose to make them integral to my ‘Memory and Representation’ classes.

The Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the unfolding Gaza War have had an important presence in South Africa, both before and after the events of October 7. The African National Congress (ANC), the country’s ruling party, took the Israeli government to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the charge of genocide in early 2024, cementing its continued support for the plight of the Palestinian people. This intervention perhaps also influenced the United Nations’ (UN) declaration of the war as a genocide in November 2024. The strong parallels drawn between the experiences of the Palestinians and Black South Africans under apartheid, have also prompted the evolution of an activist culture that draws extensively on apartheid memory. The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement which calls for boycotts against Israel is itself modelled off the anti-apartheid movement (BDS Movement, 2024: n.p.).

With this context in mind, I framed my discussion with the students by referring them to the 2009 hate speech case which was lodged by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) against Bongani Masuku. At this time, Masuku served as the International Relations spokesperson of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), South Africa’s trade union federation. In response to developments in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict between late 2008 and early 2009, members of the South African Jewish community who worked within community organizations and the Jewish student unions, encountered a wave of vitriol from anti-Israel lobbyists. Protest action began during Israel-Apartheid Week (IAW), a global campaign that aims to highlight Israel’s actions as a form of apartheid, and encourages the boycotting of all businesses associated with Israel. Protesting groups embarked on an illegal march to Beyachad, the community centre in which most of Johannesburg’s Jewish community organizations operate. Protestors burnt Israeli flags, and carried signs with images of Nazi swastikas and blood-soaked Stars of David. Threats were also made against Jewish-run businesses. COSATU was among the protesting groups with Masuku leading the charge. Soon after, Masuku appeared at an event hosted by the Palestinian Solidarity Committee (PSC) at Wits. During this event, Masuku declared ‘Anyone who supports Israel, must have his life as hard as the Gaza people who are suffering’ (South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), 2022: 05:33) and that any South African family who sends their children to join the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) should not blame COSATU when ‘something happens to them’ (SAJBD, 2022: 05:48). Since beginning COSATU’s campaign against Israel, he had also received emails from, what he referred to as, the ‘mentally disturbed Zionists’ (SAJBD, 2022: 05:55) who had tried to indicate, what they interpreted as, the antisemitic subtext of his words. He then stated, ‘[your] emails, however many they may be [. . .] won’t stop [. . .] the mighty wave, the tsunami. Whether it’s antisemitic or not, it’s none of my business and I don’t care’ (SAJBD, 2022: 06:16). After unsuccessful interventions, the SAJBD embarked on a decade long pursuit to get Masuku to issue a formal apology to the South African Jewish community. After going through the Human Rights Commission, the Equality Court and the Supreme Court, the case finally reached the Constitutional Court in 2019. In the final judgement, the SAJBD won the case and Masuku was ordered to apologize.

I began discussing the case study with the students by observing how the interaction between Masuku and the Jewish community, represented an encounter between two different collective memories of oppression and othering, particularly given the notion of Israel as an apartheid state. To frame this encounter, I turned to Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela’s (2020) critique of Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory (1992–1993/2008). In her original definition, Hirsch establishes postmemory as a term which describes how the children of Holocaust survivors experience Holocaust memory. She writes that although the children of survivors may only be exposed to Holocaust narratives through the memories shared by their parents, these memories are felt so deeply that they become integral to their own personal and collective memory (Hirsch, 2008: 106–107). They occur not through lived experience but as ‘imaginative, investment, projection, and creation’ (Hirsch, 2008: 107). A traumatic past that has already been lived continues to haunt and shape the generations that it has produced through memory. Gobodo-Madikizela suggests that it is inadequate to use a term such as postmemory to describe how Black South Africans experience the memories of their parents. This is because whereas postmemory occurs through second-hand memories of a distant past, apartheid’s impact has continued into the present as the Black South African majority continues to experience social, economic and educational marginalization (Gobodo-Madikizela, 2020: 23). Gobodo-Madikizela, therefore, coins the term ‘rewind generation’ to describe how the present generation of Black South Africans are ‘living the experiences of their forebearers rather than engaging with this past through the mediated expression of internalised narratives, images, and behaviours transmitted by the parents’ generation’ (Gobodo-Madikizela, 2020: 23, italics in the original). These experiences occur through the power relations between white and Black South Africans as the white minority continue to live in social and economic security, while the Black majority continue to live in poverty.

Many scholars have argued that these inequalities have resulted from the lasting impact of the South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC’s) failure to address the structural inequalities which occurred under apartheid. By giving voice to apartheid’s victims and perpetrators, the TRC hearings aimed to create national unity within a divided South Africa, and facilitate processes of reconciliation and reparations. However, Mahmood Mamdani (2001[1996], 2002) has observed how the TRC’s emphasis on political violence, particularly as experienced by individuals, sidelined efforts to fully grapple with the effects of socio-economic marginalization on the majority of Black South Africans. He illustrates the gravity of this issue by observing that within apartheid South Africa, the victims and perpetrators involved in acts of political violence constituted a small group (Mamdani, 2001[1996]: 385). In contrast, beneficiaries of apartheid and those whose victimhood was defined in relation to them, made up ‘the vast majority in society’ (Mamdani, 2001[1996]: 385). To fully pursue its mandate of social reconciliation between victims and perpetrators, the TRC needed to address ‘the relationship between the state and the entire South African people’ (Mamdani, 2002: 34), which it neglected to do. The illusion of ‘the rainbow nation’ further rejected South Africa’s socio-economic realities. As a symbol of the new democratic South Africa, ‘the rainbow nation’ promoted the country’s diversity, while also emphasizing its newfound unity. In doing so, Pumla Gqola (2001) observes, it signalled the ‘erasure of difference (and minimized) the continuing effects of power differentials on members of the South African body politic’ (p. 100). Misleadingly, it suggested that ‘the struggle is over and little work remains to be done’ (Gqola, 2001: 100).

Under the illusion of ‘rainbowism’, many Black South Africans thought that living under the Black-led government of the African National Congress (ANC) would ensure their needs would be addressed. However, the ANC’s continuous failure to create better social and economic conditions for Black South Africans, has resulted in feelings of betrayal. Whereas Black oppression was expected under a white-led government, it was hoped that a Black-led government would foster care and empathy for Black South Africans (Gobodo-Madikizela, 2020: 24). These factors, Gobodo-Madikizela (2020) suggests, lead to a repetition of apartheid violence in the present, albeit under different lived realties (p. 24).

Highlighting Gobodo-Madikizela’s observations, the students and I contemplated whether Masuku’s activism and vitriol was motivated by his position within the ‘rewind generation’. In viewing the Israeli government’s actions through the framework of apartheid memory, he may have interpreted the South African Jewish community’s support for Israel as mirroring the support for the systems of colonialism and apartheid which his parents and grandparents had been subjected to. His protests were meant to be a form of memory activism which avenged the past, albeit within a different historical framework. Yet, Masuku’s actions could also reflect on experiences of Black pain which have continued into the present. His actions could be viewed as a reaction to Black South Africans’ continued feelings of alienation and marginalization. One of the motivations for the protests outside Beyachad was to prompt the ANC to be more active in recognizing and speaking out against Palestinian suffering. Perhaps, it was also a plea for a recognition of Black South African suffering, and an indirect reaction against the government’s failure to end the cycle of apartheid violence under which they continue to live. Applying this proposed context, my discussion with the students reflected on the statements Masuku made at Wits. We considered how Masuku’s positionality, the application of apartheid memory, and the sentiments of the ‘rewind generation’ added a layer of complexity to these statements. This is because for Masuku, the figure of the ‘Zionist’ and the concept of ‘Zionism’ more broadly appeared emblematic of South African whiteness in both its past and present manifestations. Through this lens, the reference to the ‘Gaza people who are suffering’ could also be interpreted as a gesture to Black South African suffering. Hence, his words conflated the experiences of two oppressed groups, prompting a multidirectional call for social justice. Yet, they also targeted a community which is shaped by its own collective memory of suffering.

To explore contemporary South African Jewry’s positionality, I referred to Rothberg’s aforementioned chapters on Jews as figures of ‘complex implication’. The chapters provided a starting point to question how the historic liminality of South African Jews, and then the interplay between Holocaust memory and Jews’ relationship to Israel, inform the positionality of Jewish South Africans. From the outset, it was important to establish that the South African Jewish community is not monolithic. There are diverse sectors of the community which relate to Holocaust memory and Israel in different ways. In a recent study, Gilbert and Posel (2021), examine distinctions between the mainstream South African Jewish community and those who situate themselves outside the ‘communal mainstream’ (p. 155). The study identifies the mainstream South African Jewish community as the ‘most ardently Zionist in the diaspora’ (Gilbert and Posel, 2021: 157). The community’s commitment to the state of Israel is shaped by the ‘hauntings’ of Holocaust memory which it sees as being integral to its identity. Informed by the fear of ongoing antisemitism and the possibility that history may repeat itself, the community is defined by a ‘victim-centered outlook’ (Gilbert and Posel, 2021: 156). This outlook stresses the necessity for a Jewish state that will secure its livelihood and ensure the continued existence of global Jewry. The SAJBD and organizations such as the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF) are representative of this dominant communal perspective. In contrast, the interviews Gilbert and Posel conducted with South African Jews outside the mainstream community take a critical stance towards the relationship between Jews, Holocaust memory and the Israeli state. While they recognize antisemitism as an ongoing phenomenon, they reject communal narratives which uncritically connect the Holocaust with ‘Jewish preservation and a need for a strong Israel’ (Gilbert and Posel, 2021: 160), as well as the ‘victim-centered outlook’ which they see as justifying the Israeli state’s actions. Instead, they view Holocaust memory as being connected with ‘a commitment to anti-racism and social justice’ (Gilbert and Posel, 2021: 160). In Jewish activism circles, organizations such as South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP), which was established in 2014, adopt this perspective as a framework for their interventions. Openly positioning themselves as figures of ‘complex implication’ who engage in ‘implicated memory activism’, SAJFP members recognize the significance of Holocaust memory to collective Jewish identity but refuse to allow it to be, as they put it, ‘weaponised in support of interlinked fascist genocidal apartheid projects in South Africa, in Palestine, or anywhere else’ (South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP), 2023: n.p.).

In my discussion with the students, we considered how both the communal perspectives Gilbert and Posel outline in their study, are reflected in the Jewish responses to Masuku’s words and actions. The SAJBD clearly interpreted Masuku’s words through postmemory. They perceived them as a ‘recreation’ of the rhetoric used to signify othering and promote violence during the Holocaust and other histories of Jewish oppression. For them, the term ‘Zionists’ substituted for the term ‘Jews’, implying that his threat to make the Zionists suffer was a coded threat against South African Jewry. Comparing the suffering he had planned for them to the suffering experienced by the ‘Gaza people’ may itself have felt reminiscent of the rhetoric used to manifest pogroms and other acts of brutality towards Jews. It was based on this premise that David Hirsh, the director of the London Centre for the Director of Antisemitism, was consulted on the case to provide evidence that although Masuku’s rhetoric was framed as being targeted at the Israeli state as opposed to Jews, it could still be interpreted as antisemitic (SAJBD, 2022: 10:00).

In contrast, Steven Friedman, the director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Johannesburg, and a significant figure in SAJFP, testified in defence of Masuku. He did so in the belief that Masuku’s statements were not targeted at Jews, but at those who criticized Zionism as a political ideology (Friedman, 2022: n.p.). The SAJBD’s allegations, he suggested, were part of an ongoing effort to silence criticism of the Israeli government and bully ‘anyone who says the Israeli state is racist’ (Friedman, 2022: n.p.). Friedman clearly viewed the SAJBD’s approach of drawing on memories of Jewish oppression to frame Masuku’s words as exploitative. In an article written following the conclusion of the Masuku case, he refers to the evocation of Holocaust memory as a ‘trick’ used to justify the oppression of the Palestinian people (Friedman, 2022: n.p.). In his own reference to Holocaust memory, Friedman refers to a statement made by General Yair Golan, the IDF’s deputy Chief of Staff in 2016. In the statement, Golan expressed that he was fearful of remembering ‘the revolting trends that occurred [. . .] in Germany in particular, some 70, 80 and 90 years ago and finding evidence of those trends here, among us, in 2016’ (cited in Friedman, 2022: n.p.). With this reference, Friedman suggests that the use of Holocaust memory in relation to the Israeli state is a form of propaganda, using a narrative of victimhood to create and justify one of perpetration. With this, he distances himself both from a mainstream Jewish communal identity, and from the community’s approach to engaging with Holocaust memory.

In reflecting on the perspectives of Masuku and the two opposing sectors of the South African Jewish community, I encouraged the students to closely consider how memories of traumatic pasts shaped each of these perspectives, and how their respective positions were informed by the notion of implication. These reflections were vital as we used the case’s resolution to explore the possibility of empathy between opposing groups, and the role memory activism could play in facilitating this.

The search for empathy in difficult times

To fulfil OSUN’s objective of equipping students with the ability to ‘address global challenges as thoughtful and engaged citizens’, the ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ course created solidarity between the students, bridging the gaps between their different backgrounds and opposing positions. Because of this, I found it crucial to conclude the ‘Memory and Representation’ classes by considering possible approaches to achieving empathy and solidarity. Critiques of empathy and solidarity have engaged with (among other topics) the ways cultural influences shape emotions (Ahmed, 2014[2004]), the functions of spectacle and media in constructing solidarity (Chouliaraki, 2013), the cultivation of empathy through the reading of fiction (Keen, 2007), and acts of care as aesthetic experiences (Saito, 2022). In the ‘Memory and Representation’ classes, I referred to conceptualizations of empathy which related to the histories we encountered in the course. Through a discussion of Masuku’s apology, I introduced the students to two interrelated concepts: Gobodo-Madikizela’s (2008) ‘empathic repair’ and Rothberg’s (2019) ‘empathetic identification’. With specific reference to the TRC hearings and post-apartheid South Africa, Gobodo-Madikizela describes ‘empathic repair’ as a ‘constant search for the emergence of human moments that can create a sense of solidarity and transcend old dividing lines that promote othering’ (Gobodo-Madikizela, 2008: 331). This leads to a recognition of one another’s humanity, as well as the healing of ‘historical ruptures’ (Gobodo-Madikizela, 2008: 331). Similarly, in ‘From Gaza to Warsaw’, Rothberg considers how seeking ‘empathetic identification’ involves accessing points of commonality between different groups which create connections between them.

To explore how ‘empathic repair’ and ‘empathetic identification’ can occur within broken or transitional societies through memory activism, I introduced the students to the 2007 Face 2 Face project. Conceived by photographers JR and Marco, the Face 2 Face project was an illegal photo exhibition that aimed to connect Israelis and Palestinians. Having initially visited the Middle East in 2005, JR and Marco were struck by how, despite their differences, Israelis and Palestinians shared many common traits with one another. Identifying these commonalities, they thought, could create empathy between the two opposing groups. They designed an exhibition, using close-up portraits of Israelis and Palestinians doing the same jobs and holding the exact same facial expressions. They then placed these portraits side-by-side (or face-to-face) and in large formats, which they pasted ‘in unavoidable places, on both Israeli and Palestinian sides’ (JR, 2007: 02:37). In making the portraits visible to both groups, JR and Marco attempted to get them to view one another’s lived realities through ‘Broadcast strategic empathy’ (Keen, 2007: xiv, italics in the original). Suzanne Keen’s formulation of this term is connected to readers’ engagement with literary texts, as opposed to the viewing of artistic and photographic representations. Nevertheless, it is valuable in illuminating the response JR and Marco seeked to evoke. As Keen puts it, broadcast strategic empathy occurs when an author calls upon ‘every reader to feel with members of a group, by emphasizing common vulnerabilities and hopes through universalizing representations’ (Keen, 2007: xiv). As the ‘authors’ of the Face 2 Face project, JR and Marco aimed to use their illustrations of universalized everyday experiences to prompt Israelis and Palestinians to probe deeper into their ‘common vulnerabilities and hopes’ and recognize their shared humanity.

The value of using The Face 2 Face campaign as a case study was that it helped the students see how the search for ‘human moments’ need not be one that is rooted in shared experiences of violence and othering. Rather, it could also emerge through shared everyday experiences and ‘universalized representations’ which are defined by their ordinariness and predictability. Mapping this onto the Masuku/SAJBD case, the students and I discussed the possibility that, beyond the apology, perhaps a significant approach to healing the rifts been the players involved was to find empathic bonds. This may have occurred not only by relating to one another through the commonalities between their historical experiences of othering and oppression, but also via their everyday experiences as South Africans.

To further explore the possibilities that ‘empathic repair’ and ‘empathetic identification’ can create, specifically in the relation to memory and representation, I took the students on a tour of the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre (JHGC). The JHGC is run under the directorship of Tali Nates, one of the members of the ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ teaching faculty. What makes the Centre a unique space is its approach to bringing Holocaust memory into dialogue with other histories of oppression, particularly on the African continent. The Centre’s permanent exhibition brings the narratives of Holocaust victims, survivors, perpetrators and bystanders into dialogue with those of the genocide in Rwanda. It then extends to the narrative of the 2008 South African xenophobia attacks. These histories are connected through personal and communal stories, as well as the integration of art, music, and poetry. Nates and Herman (2023) observe that a central theme which emerges throughout the exhibition is that of ‘choices and dilemmas’ (p. 133). As visitors to the JHGC interact with the permanent exhibition, they are encouraged to reflect on the dilemmas of the role players involved, and how they would respond if they occupied their positions.

While not directly discussed in relation to museums, Lilie Chouliaraki’s (2013) observations on, what she terms, the ‘theatricality of humanitarian communication’ (p. 22, italics in the original) offer valuable insights into the experiences of empathy that spaces such as the JHGC seek to create for their visitors. The theatricality of the museum exhibition distances ‘the spectator from the spectacle of the vulnerable other through the objective [exhibition space], while, at the same time, enabling proximity between the two though narrative and visual resources that invite our empathetic judgement towards the spectacle’ (Chouliaraki, 2013: 22). For my students, the JHGC’s theatricality prompted their engagement with ‘empathic repair’ and ‘empathetic identification’ from two perspectives. As visitors, navigating the JHGC as everyday spectators, the exhibition’s ‘spectacle’ offered them the opportunity to explore identities and positionalities which differed to their own. This led them to seek out empathic bonds with and exercise ‘empathetic judgement’ towards the figures that filled the exhibition’s narrative. As literary scholars, it helped them reflect on how media such as literature and art could be integral to enacting empathic processes. Assigning the students the aforementioned task of writing museum exhibition proposals that incorporated the literary texts they studied, prompted these reflections further. This was because the task required them to showcase how they themselves would use literature to curate a ‘spectacle’ that could inspire both ‘empathic repair’, ‘empathetic identification’ and activism.

Exploring implication through the poetic word

In the 2024 iteration of the ‘Memory and Representation’ course, the students were given the option to develop their own creative piece, drawing on aspects of multidirectional memory and the implicated subject. One of the students, Dshamilja Roshani, a spoken word artist of German-Iranian descent, chose to write a poem. The poem highlights how the interlinked courses encouraged students to examine their own positionality, and how they themselves could be changemakers.

Entitled ‘The Only Thing Left’, Roshani’s (2024) poem is inspired by South African poet Kopano Maroga’s (2020) ‘it’s been so long’. Maroga’s poem uses an exploration of their identity as a queer person in post-apartheid South Africa to examine the impact of South Africa’s history of colonialism, the nature of language, and understandings of gender identity. Roshani’s poem explores the complexities of their German-Iranian identity in light of the unfolding Gaza war. Referring to Germany as ‘The country I was born in (yet often struggle to call home)’ (Roshani, 2024: 16), they present the reader with a conversation between themself and Amma, their German grandmother, during a family dinner. During this dinner, Roshani breaks an uncomfortable silence by asking Amma what their family did during the Holocaust. Amma suggests she and her family have challenged their position as beneficiaries of the Nazi regime by referring to how her father helped hide their Jewish neighbours (Roshani, 2024: 16). This appears to distance them from the German majority who were implicated in the regime’s actions through their silence and passivity. Yet, Roshani complicates this perception by referring to a study where they read that 30% of Germans believe they helped the Jews under the Nazi regime, when ‘in reality it was 0.3%’ (Roshani, 2024: 16). Based off these figures, they state that they want to believe Amma, but ‘memory can be a convenient beast’ (Roshani, 2024: 16) that can distort or hide unacknowledged truths.

Drawing on the multidirectionality of their family history, Roshani then parallels their and their grandmother’s activism within different periods of the Iranian regime. They chart the trajectory between Amma’s protest activity in 1967 during Iran’s last Shah’s visit to Berlin (Roshani, 2024: 19), and their own protest action in 2022 in support of the feminist revolution which fought against Iran’s oppressive gendered laws. The connections between Amma’s and Roshani’s activist identities lead Roshani to wonder if their future will follow a similar path to Amma’s. They question whether they ‘will still fight back’ (Roshani, 2024: 19) when they are Amma’s age, or if they too ‘will cradle a beast of [their] memory’ (Roshani, 2024: 19) as the family dinner scene repeats itself with their own grandchildren. Instead of the Holocaust, however, Roshani imagines their grandchildren asking them what they did during the Gaza war. They refer to the war as ‘the thing without a name’ (Roshani, 2024: 19), implying that the language available to protest the atrocities which have occurred in Gaza is restricted because terms such as ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid’ are considered to be ‘too burdened with history/to be dragged into the present’ (Roshani, 2024: 16). For Roshani, the absence of language itself denotes implication. This is because, as they imply, those who refuse to use the terms, which, to Roshani, represent a true expression of the violence and oppression in Gaza, are implicated in the silencing of Palestinian suffering. The poem circles back to Amma who states that she does not care ‘what name we give the thing currently happening in Gaza./“It is horrible and it must end”’ (Roshani, 2024: 19, italics in the original). Roshani (2024) wishes that Amma’s country would heed these words as opposed to ‘dropping death from distant skies’ (p. 19) as ‘police beat up those who dare to speak up/and deport Brown bodies who diagree’ (p. 19). The emphasis on the silencing of othering and violence in the present leads Roshani (2024) to contemplate how systems of implication have emerged continuously throughout history which has ‘birthed far too many nameless monsters’ (p. 20).

The poem concludes with Roshani (2024) suggesting that perhaps the only way to create change is to begin not in the past, but the present ‘for it is the only thing we have left/to change’ (p. 20). On one hand, this can be read as a call to action to implicated subjects to engage in forms of ‘implicated memory activism’. On the other, it could be interpreted as a call for ‘differentiated solidarity’. In Roshani’s poem, this call is to Jewish victims of the Holocaust, victims of the Iranian regime and the Palestinians. It asks them to draw on their collective experiences of social injustices to find shared ‘human moments’ to embark on processes of ‘empathic repair’ in the present. In integrating the various threads of our discussions into their examinations of their positionality and memory activism in their poem, Roshani demonstrates how a nuanced, and critical approach to thinking about the nature of implication, can create new opportunities for explorations of one’s personal identity, as well as their identity as an activist.

Conclusion

In this article, I have aimed to demonstrate the value of drawing on the intersections between memory studies scholarship and memory activism in humanities teaching. To do so, I documented my approach to teaching Michael Rothberg’s concept of the implicated subject in relation to the content of two interrelated courses. The case studies I used to prompt my students’ interactions with memory studies and memory activism in my ‘Memory and Representation’ course were grounded in a contemporary South African context. Our discussions of the case studies and the assessments the students were tasked with completing required them to employ modes of analysis used primarily in literary studies. Yet, when viewed in relation the interdisciplinary nature of the ‘Cultures of Hate and Oppression’ course – which it was formulated in relation to – what is evident is that employing models for teaching and assessment that approach memory studies as socially engaged scholarship, can be productively used across all humanities disciplines and national contexts. Applying the pedagogies I have outlined to address the ‘activist turn’ in memory studies may be of particular importance at the present moment, given the current push for universities to become spaces which have stronger connections with civic engagement and outreach.