chr 500-0bCHR Dark Textchr 500-0bchr 500-0b
  • About
    • Centre for Humanities Research
    • DSI-NRF Flagship
    • Partnerships
    • Funders
    • Reports
    • Staff
  • Iyatsiba Lab
    • LoKO
    • Sound Working Group
    • Documentary film
  • New Archival Visions
  • Research Platforms
    • Aesthetics and Politics
      • Factory of the Arts
        • About the Factory of the Arts
        • Convening the Factory of the Arts
        • Artists in Residence
      • Research Projects
    • Becoming Technical of the Human
      • Laboratory of Kinetic Objects
      • Research Projects
    • Migrating Violence
      • Research Projects
        • Political Theory and Philosophy
        • Trans-formative Consitutionalism
  • Research Chairs
    • NRF SARChI Chair in Visual History and Theory
      • Postgraduate bursaries and postdoctoral fellowships in Visual History & Theory
      • Postgraduate Module In Visual History, 2023 (HIS 735/835)
    • Charlotte Maxeke-Mary Robinson Research Chair
    • UK-SA Bilateral Digital humanities chair in culture and technics
  • Fellowship Programme
    • Fellows
    • Winter School
    • Visiting Scholars
    • Seminar Programme
  • Publications & Archive
    • Publications & Creative Outputs
    • Galleries
    • Video
    • Film
    • Podcast
  • News
    • Workshops
    • Conferences
    • Lectures
    • Special Meetings
    • Colloquia
    • Seminars
    • Arts Events
  • Contact
✕ When autocomplete results are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to go to the desired page. Touch device users, explore by touch or with swipe gestures.
            No results See all results

            Mine Mine Mine:

            A Conversation in the Humanities in Session seminar series at the Centre for Humanities Research, part of the Advanced Research Seminar. Uhuru Phalafala in conversation with Dr Lwando Scott.

            Mine Mine Mine:

            Date: Thursday 25 April 2024

            Venue: The CHR’s Iyatsiba Lab,
            66 Greatmore Street, Woodstock
            (enter via Regents Road)

            Time: 1:00pm-3:00pm

            This Humanities in Session Series seminar is based on Uhuru Portia Phalafala’s Mine Mine Mine which is a personal narration of the author’s family’s experience of the migrant labor system brought on by the gold mining industry in Johannesburg, South Africa. Using geopoetics to map geopolitics, Phalafala follows the death of her grandfather during a historic juncture in 2018, when a silicosis class action lawsuit against the mining industry in South Africa was settled in favor of the miners.

            Phalafala ties the catastrophic effects of gold mining on the miners and the environment in Johannesburg to the destruction of Black lives, the institution of the Black family, and Black sociality. Her epic poem addresses racial capitalism, bringing together histories of the transatlantic and trans-Indian slave trades, of plantation economies, and of mining and prison-industrial complexes. As inheritor of the migrant labor lineage, she uses her experience to explore how Black women carry intergenerational trauma of racial capitalism in their bodies and intersects the personal and national, continental and diasporic narration of this history within a critical race framework.

            Uhuru Portia Phalafala is a senior lecturer of English literature at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. She is the author of Keorapetse Kgositsile and The Black Arts Movement: Poetics of Possibility and coeditor of Keorapetse Kgositsile: Collected Poems, 1969–2018 (Nebraska, 2023).

            “History lies in our bodies, Uhuru Phalafala shows in Mine Mine Mine. Her words are insistent, alive, as necessary as breathing. . . . Phalafala writes a new history, tenderly filling in what was lost, the births and generations missed during the long absences, bearing witness to the links from the Atlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades to the dust of the mines, tracing centuries of history in one body breathing.”—Gabeba Baderoon, author of The History of Intimacy and A Hundred Silences

            “In Mine Mine Mine Uhuru Portia Phalafala pulls off a small miracle of craft: an intimate poem and yet also an epic. In the tradition of composers like Zim Ngqawana and poets like Okot p’Bitek, this work is personal narrative, a musical composition, an operatic libretto, simultaneously original and yet drawing from the lineage of griots, inyosis, and imbongis, with perfect play between soloist and chorus. An incredible book that spans self, history, and unknown dimensions, part spirit and part human.”—Chris Abani, author of Smoking the Bible and The Secret History of Las Vegas

            This book is available for short-term (24 hour) loan from the CHR. 
            Speaker:

            Uhuru Phalafala

            Uhuru Portia Phalafala is a senior lecturer of English literature at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. She is the author of Mine Mine Mine, Keorapetse Kgositsile and The Black Arts Movement: Poetics of Possibility, and coeditor of Keorapetse Kgositsile: Collected Poems, 1969–2018 (Nebraska, 2023).

            In conversation with Dr Lwando Scott (CHR).

            For enquiries email:

            centreforhumanitiesresearch@uwc.ac.za

            Share
            1

            Related posts

            July 30, 2025

            SA Jazz – These Times


            Read more
            July 29, 2025

            African Critical Inquiry Programme Announces 2025 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Award


            Read more
            July 25, 2025

            Exhibition opening: And I, a newly evolved fish.


            Read more
            July 20, 2025

            Kronos, Archiving Environmental Change: Mapping a Network


            Read more

            Search

            ✕ When autocomplete results are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to go to the desired page. Touch device users, explore by touch or with swipe gestures.

            Sign Up to our newsletter


            Stay up to date with the latest news and developments from the Centre for Humanities Research.




            Recent Media

            • The Herds
              April 9, 2025
            • Minister De Lille joins Net Vir Pret and the CHR at Barrydale’s annual Reconciliation Day Festival.
              January 10, 2025
            • Pro-Vocation: Roots and Wings 20-24 November 2024
              December 3, 2024
            Centre for Humanities Research

            1 week ago

            Centre for Humanities Research
            Dear fellows, colleagues and friends, The 2025 International Workshop on Visual History & Theory will take place between October 15-16. It takes as its starting point the notion of gesture, which operates across a range of literal and conceptual levels.The workshop organisers now invite proposals that consider the following themes: temporal, movement, ethical, insubstantial, and carrying. Workshop participants are invited to consider these and other openings around notions of the micro-, and gesture, movement and freedom in relation to images and other media.Abstract deadline: 7 August 2025.Please see below and attached for more details and circulate to any colleagues that may be interested.www.chrflagship.uwc.ac.za/call-for-proposals-gesture-movement-freedom-on-the-micro-international-... ... See MoreSee Less

            Photo

            View on Facebook
            · Share

            Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

            Centre for Humanities Research

            2 weeks ago

            Centre for Humanities Research
            Our third announcement of the Artist Forum is themed :Future Forms : DIY Institution Building Date : Thurs 31 July 2025Time : 11:00 am - 13:00pmVenue:The CHR's Iyatsiba Lab,66 Greatmore Street,Woodstock (enter via Regent St)centreforhumanitiesresearch@uwc.ac.za ... See MoreSee Less

            Photo

            View on Facebook
            · Share

            Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

            Centre for Humanities Research

            2 weeks ago

            Centre for Humanities Research
            Our third announcement of the Artist Forum is themed :Future Forms : DIY Institution Building Date : Thurs 31 July 2025Time : 11:00 am - 13:00pmVenue:The CHR;S iYATSIBA lab,66 Greatmore Street,Woodstock (enter via Regent St)more info and RSVP DETAILS:centreforhumanitiesresearch@uwc.ac.za ... See MoreSee Less

            Photo

            View on Facebook
            · Share

            Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

            Centre for Humanities Research

            2 weeks ago

            Centre for Humanities Research
            The @chr_uwc in collaboration with @michaelisschooloffineart are presenting ' Holding a Thought' The puppetry of Ukwanda exhibition from the 23rd of July until 20 August 2025Michaelis House31 Orange StreetGardens Cape Town Can't wait for you to come and experience this ☺️ ... See MoreSee Less

            Photo

            View on Facebook
            · Share

            Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

            Centre for Humanities Research

            4 weeks ago

            Centre for Humanities Research
            The CHR’s annual Winter School takes place between 7-11 July at the Iyatsiba Lab. Its theme for 2025 is the question of Freedom. Alongside its academic programme will be two public keynote lectures. The second will take place at the Iyatsiba Lab ,66 Greatmore Str on Thurs10 July and will be given by Monika Mehta.Please do join us by 16:30 ... See MoreSee Less

            Photo

            View on Facebook
            · Share

            Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

            Research Platforms

            • NRF SARChI Chair in Visual History and Theory
            • Andrew W. Mellon Chair of Aesthetic Theory and Material Performance
            • Factory of the Arts
            • Laboratory of Kinetic Objects
            • Seminar Programme
            • Publications

            Recently Added

            • SA Jazz – These Times
              July 30, 2025
            • African Critical Inquiry Programme Announces 2025 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Award
              July 29, 2025
            • Exhibition opening: And I, a newly evolved fish.
              July 25, 2025
            ✕ When autocomplete results are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to go to the desired page. Touch device users, explore by touch or with swipe gestures.

            SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER


            Stay up to date with the latest news and developments from the Centre for Humanities Research.



            © 2025 UWC | The Centre for Humanities Research. All Rights Reserved. Designed By Spotkolours Design
                      No results See all results