| Abstract: | In this engagement with the idea of the common in contemporary South Africa, the author uses three episodes from his own experience in and of South Africa – a performance at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in 2009; a bus journey from Cape Town in 2010; news of the Marikana mine massacre in August 2012 – as well as recent work by theorists Lauren Berlant, Bernard Stiegler and Paolo Virno, as prompts to explore how issues of public and private feature in recent representations and experiences of the South African postcolony. In responding to several of the essays included in this issue, the author also discusses the role of the institutions and infrastructures of cultural mediation in the production of cultural products that engage with these issues, and gestures towards the responsibilities of intellectuals and artists in interrogating their own positions in relation to the idea of the commons in South Africa. |
