Disrupted (Post)identities

Memory, Place, and the Power of the ‘Post’

In a recent scholarly forum, I was invited to respond to a manuscript that explored the use of the prefix ‘post’ as a heuristic device, specifically in the context of post-apartheid South Africa. This exercise prompted me to pause and reflect on my own deployment of the term ‘post’ across multiple registers in my research, particularly as it relates to my positionality in (post)colonial Australia and (post)war/(post)socialist Poland. The exercise was catalytic: it opened a space to interrogate the ‘post’ not merely as a temporal marker, but as a powerful discursive tool that shapes our understanding of memory, place, and identity…