Open AccessPerforming Invisible Stories through Creative History
Author(s) -
Julia Wells
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
public historian/the public historian
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.173
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1533-8576
pISSN - 0272-3433
DOI - 10.1525/tph.2022.44.1.7
Subject(s) - militant , colonialism , feeling , unrest , context (archaeology) , history , conquest , aesthetics , sociology , gender studies , literature , psychology , art , social psychology , political science , law , ancient history , archaeology , politics
The recovery of the responses of Southern African people to colonial conquest two hundred years ago is complex. Their feelings must be deduced from their actions, as recorded in hostile written records. A two-person play, Umnqa!—Never Defeated portrays the fighting spirit of a young man who eluded colonial controls three times. Produced in 2015–16 in the context of militant student unrest demanding intellectual inclusiveness, the performance aimed to engage nonacademic audiences and speak to their experiences. Grounded in the theories of Paolo Freire, it became a foundational example of an emerging creative history methodology which promotes a robust partnering of history and art to tell partly imagined stories.