Abstract
In this article, I propose correlations between my ambivalent position as a white, English speaking, second generation Jewish female living in post apartheid, post-colonial South Africa and debates within South African whiteness studies around what Melissa Steyn (2006) identifies as a post-1994 sense of psychological "dislocation" which certain white South Africans are experiencing. Underpinnings of white identity were and are being challenged through processes of redress; anchors which previously held whiteness in place are, arguably, shifting or have been removed, resulting in a sense of displacement for those "White Africans" who staked much of their identity on their privileged whiteness. In proposing these correlations, reference the artwork of the Dis-Location / Re-Location exhibition. The artwork draws analogies between the "immigrant" experiences of two Jewish protagonists the colonial English woman Bertha Marks, who immigrated to South Africa in 1885 to enter into an arranged marriage, and myself as post-colonial persona. Bertha's experiences of dislocation and alienation from the colony are paralleled with my experiences of displacement from a society caught in the throes of reconstruction and redress. Selected synchronic linkages between Bertha's and my subjectivities as Jewish South Africans are touched upon. Both experiences are considered as manifestations of the immigrant's need to re-Iocate within their new environment, entailing re-evaluations of personal and collective ideologies of gendered and Jewish whiteness.