Articles and Essays

A selection of essays, both recent and more distant. Topics range from the life of Bram Fischer, to hospitality, dwelling and belonging, fugitive narrative and refugees, the fiction of Caryl Phillips and Nadine Gordimer, and more.

Caryl Phillips and the Question of Rights

Bram Fischer, or What Happens when the World Becomes Inhospitable

Trump the Antisemantic, and the Boundaries of Populism

The Question of Dwelling: South Africa and Elsewhere

The Voices in my Head: Reflections on South Africa, Israel, Palestine and Gaza

Afrikaner Revolutionary Revisited: Bram Fischer in our Times

Fugitive/Narrative: Some Starting Points

The Space of Crossing: Caryl Phillips, Jenny Erpenbeck and Parallel Genealogy

Rights, Routes, and Refugees: The Fiction of Caryl Phillips

Looking from South Africa to the World: A Story of Identity for Our Times

Writing the South African Treason Trial

Music of New Orleans

Surviving Murder: Oscillation and Triangulation in Nadine Gordimer’s The House Gun

And some memorials...

Arthur Chaskalson

Arthur Chaskalson was one of the most inspirational figures in my life. I presented this talk at a memorial conference at the American University Washington College of Law, Washington DC, 4 March 2013.

Nadine Gordimer

When Nadine Gordimer passed away in July 2014, I wrote this memoir. She too was a profound presence in my life and work. The brief essay was published in a variety of places, from The Conversation, to Libération in Paris, to the Sunday Independent in Johannesburg.

Alon Confino

Alon Confino was the inspirational director of the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies at UMass. He was a leading historian of Germany, a courageous historian of Israel-Palestine, and a good friend.