“In the world through which I travel, I am
endlessly creating myself.” – Frantz Fanon (1952: 229)
If like Fanon
we are constantly creating ourselves as we travel through the world then our
potential for self-creation is limited by the world that surrounds us. In this paper a journey through the aesthetics of South
Africa’s two National Women’s Monuments will be mapped. These two symbols of
the South Africa in which we live will be explored in terms of their
possibility for creating us just as we created them. Fanon will be our travel
companion and will allow us to see the realities that underpin the world in
which we live which are often obscured by the immediate materiality of what we
see. With Fanon as our travel guide and companion we will see these monuments for
what they really represent, we will see the nationalisms that have underpinned
their creation, we will see the way in which women have been implicated in the
gender constructions of these nationalism and we will also see what our country
could potentially be if these monuments and others were to be transformed or if
new ones, more radical ones were erected. Travelling with Fanon means that we
will allow him to point out what we may have never seen before and may never
have seen without his help, but it also means being critical of him when his
own particularity as a black male does not allow him to see the world and its
actors in all of its fullness.
