Nordic Journal of African Studies (Jun 2023)
A Part of and Apart From
Abstract
Marianne Thamm’s memoir Hitler, Verwoerd, Mandela and Me provides an interesting take on adoption: the adoption of an immigrant by a destination country and vice versa. This paper investigates Thamm’s navigation of the geographic, social, and linguistic spaces as an immigrant in Apartheid-era South Africa, and how it aids in creating her cognitive-affective map. To do so, the cognitive-affective map of adopting a new country, as well as of being adopted by a country, is applied twofold. Thamm meaningfully engages in two narrative strands (Singley, 2011) often found in adoption memoirs. These strands focus on the adoptee as being unadoptable, and as being part of a new beginnings narrative. Regarding the first strand, Thamm reflects on immigrants' 'unadoptability' in their new country, exposing normative prejudices, injustices, and ideologies in the process. Further, she uses her agency as a journalist in an effort to expose how this 'unadoptability' extends to the Black population in Apartheid South Africa. As for the second strand, her representation of herself, as the country's adoptee, enables her to take part in a new beginnings narrative, and to show how she takes agency and admits culpability in the need for this narrative to be created. In other words, Thamm admits that her passive resistance to the apartheid regime does not make her innocent to the injustices committed against the oppressed; as a white person, albeit a marginalized immigrant, she enjoys the privilege that accompanies her race during the regime. Finally, Thamm undertakes what can be classified as an adoption reunion journey to Europe, which further shapes her cognitive-affective maps and navigation of South African spaces as an immigrant. She reflects on how, after Apartheid, South Africa adopted back those it rejected under the regime.
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