Research Catalog

Title

Satanism and family murder in late apartheid South Africa : imagining the end of whiteness / Nicky Falkof.

Author

Falkof, Nicky

Publication

Basingstoke, Hampshire : Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xi, 223 pages; 23 cm

Summary

"During the last years of apartheid, white South African society found itself in the grip of previously unimaginable social and political change, which sometimes manifested in morbid cultural symptoms. This book considers two of those symptoms, a pair of matched moral panics that appeared in the contemporary media and in popular literature. It argues that excessive reactions to the apparent threat posed by a cult of white Satanists, never proven to exist, and to a so-called epidemic of white family murder reveal important truths about fear, violence and resistance, as well as fragmentations within the poles of white South African identity: nationalism, gender, history, the family, even whiteness itself. Together, the Satanism scare and the family murder 'epidemic' draw a compelling picture of the psychic landscape of white culture at the end of apartheid, revealing both pathological responses to social change and the brutalising effects that apartheid had on those who benefited from it most"--Back cover.

Subject

• Moral panics > South Africa > History
• White people > South Africa > History > 20th century
• White people > South Africa > Psychology > History > 20th century
• Apartheid > Social aspects > South Africa
• South Africa > Social conditions > 1961-1994
• South Africa > Race relations > 20th century

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographic references and index.

Contents

Satanism. Excavations -- Anatomy of a moral panic -- History and identity -- Older anxieties -- Resistance and (bio)power -- Family murder. A death in the family -- The Afrikaans family romance -- A 'bloody epidemic' -- The righteous path -- The whitest white -- Conclusion : the end of whiteness.

Call Number

Sc D 15-1476

ISBN

• 9781137503046 (hbk.)
• 1137503041 (hbk.)
• 9781137503053 (PDF ebook) (canceled/invalid)

OCLC

917136407

Author

Falkof, Nicky, author.

Title

Satanism and family murder in late apartheid South Africa : imagining the end of whiteness / Nicky Falkof.

Publisher

Basingstoke, Hampshire : Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographic references and index.

Research Call Number

Sc D 15-1476