We Are Not South African: Mediating National Identity in a Postcolonial and Postapartheid State
We Are Not South African explores how national identity functions as a colonial tool of communication, control, and power. Author Rachel Lara van der Merwe examines how humans and the planet are integrally shaped by the idea of the nation, and speculates on how different sociopolitical imaginaries, instead of the nation, could inform ways of being-together in the world.

Linking national identity to colonialism, the book broadens the idea of the nation to include its impact on all forms of life, human and more-than-human. Van der Merwe builds her argument on three central observations: that nations are made up of conflicting and fractured imaginaries, not unified, cohesive ones; the nation is divisive by nature, tracing back to its colonial origins; and the nation, along with the state, exploits both humans and more-than-humans. In order to build a more just and sustainable planetary society, she argues, liberation from such colonial formations is vital. In response, the book asks: How could we reimagine how we organize our societies through values of relationality and mutual care rather than rigid borders? What sociopolitical imaginaries do we need, or already possess, that might inform new configurations of community?

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We Are Not South African: Mediating National Identity in a Postcolonial and Postapartheid State
We Are Not South African explores how national identity functions as a colonial tool of communication, control, and power. Author Rachel Lara van der Merwe examines how humans and the planet are integrally shaped by the idea of the nation, and speculates on how different sociopolitical imaginaries, instead of the nation, could inform ways of being-together in the world.

Linking national identity to colonialism, the book broadens the idea of the nation to include its impact on all forms of life, human and more-than-human. Van der Merwe builds her argument on three central observations: that nations are made up of conflicting and fractured imaginaries, not unified, cohesive ones; the nation is divisive by nature, tracing back to its colonial origins; and the nation, along with the state, exploits both humans and more-than-humans. In order to build a more just and sustainable planetary society, she argues, liberation from such colonial formations is vital. In response, the book asks: How could we reimagine how we organize our societies through values of relationality and mutual care rather than rigid borders? What sociopolitical imaginaries do we need, or already possess, that might inform new configurations of community?

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We Are Not South African: Mediating National Identity in a Postcolonial and Postapartheid State

We Are Not South African: Mediating National Identity in a Postcolonial and Postapartheid State

by Rachel Lara van der Merwe
We Are Not South African: Mediating National Identity in a Postcolonial and Postapartheid State
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We Are Not South African: Mediating National Identity in a Postcolonial and Postapartheid State

We Are Not South African: Mediating National Identity in a Postcolonial and Postapartheid State

by Rachel Lara van der Merwe

Overview

We Are Not South African explores how national identity functions as a colonial tool of communication, control, and power. Author Rachel Lara van der Merwe examines how humans and the planet are integrally shaped by the idea of the nation, and speculates on how different sociopolitical imaginaries, instead of the nation, could inform ways of being-together in the world.

Linking national identity to colonialism, the book broadens the idea of the nation to include its impact on all forms of life, human and more-than-human. Van der Merwe builds her argument on three central observations: that nations are made up of conflicting and fractured imaginaries, not unified, cohesive ones; the nation is divisive by nature, tracing back to its colonial origins; and the nation, along with the state, exploits both humans and more-than-humans. In order to build a more just and sustainable planetary society, she argues, liberation from such colonial formations is vital. In response, the book asks: How could we reimagine how we organize our societies through values of relationality and mutual care rather than rigid borders? What sociopolitical imaginaries do we need, or already possess, that might inform new configurations of community?

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781978842977
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Publication date: 04/14/2026
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)
Age Range: 16 - 18 Years

About the Author

RACHEL LARA VAN DER MERWE is an assistant professor in the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies at the University of the Free State.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations  
Chapter 1: Introduction                 
Chapter 2: Imagining the Social, Imagining the Nation             
Chapter 3: Unsettling, Delinking, and Staying with the Trouble
Chapter 4: Struggling over the Idea of South Africa                    
Chapter 5: National Identity from Afar   
Chapter 6: Emigration as Extraction                               
Chapter 7: Remediating Water: From a Medium of Life to a National Resource                      
Chapter 8: Colonial Water in the Cape                           
Chapter 9: Protocols of Planetary Translation
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index
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