A Blow to the Head: A History of Violence
Available for pre-order. Forthcoming in July.
Following the threads that radiate out from his personal experience of violence, Du Toit traces the events and the decisions that brought him to that fateful confrontation. He is forced to confront his place and complicity in a country still traumatised by racial violence – and to ask/explore what is required by the work of healing and repair.
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A Blow to the Head: A History of Violence
One summer morning, Cape Town academic Andries Du Toit remonstrates mildly with a white man who is being rude to a black waitress in the cafeteria of his local health club. A few weeks later he finds himself sprawled on his back with a fractured cheekbone, blood pooling in the back of his throat, the target of payback from one of the city’s most feared gangsters. What just happened?
Following the threads that radiate out from his personal experience of violence, Du Toit traces the events and the decisions that brought him to that fateful confrontation. What ensues is a journey of discovery that forces him to confront his place and complicity in a country still traumatised by racial violence – and to ask/explore what is required by the work of healing and repair.
Andries du Toit is a researcher, teacher, and writer based at the School of Government at the University of the Western Cape. Over the last thirty years has done extensive research and writing about poverty and inequality in rural South Africa. He lives in Muizenberg.
Andries du Toit’s A Blow to the Head is a remarkable book. He writes with forensic precision about what happened to him, all the personal, social, professional factors that brought him to speak out against racist behaviour, and suffer the consequences. There are many things to admire – the way he contextualises his thinking in childhood experience, his working life and his intellectual trajectory; the complex take on shame and rage; the search for a ‘third position’ between antagonistic camps that doesn’t gloss over complicity or privilege. This is an insightful, moving addition to the writing on violence in our society. Ivan Vladislavic
Vividly and poignantly, Andries du Toit reveals, probes and picks at the scars of violence and racism in South Africa that refuse to heal. That cannot heal unless confronted with words, that cannot be confronted with words without opening new wounds and reopening old ones. Scars whose provenance exceeds the vocabularies we have for understanding violence. This is a work that is at once profoundly existential and immediately pragmatic, and it is a tale for South Africa and for the world. Pointing to the urgent need for repair in a world out of joint, du Toit does not offer platitudes, false hope, or easy solace. Instead, he offers honesty. I am grateful for this book and humbled by it. Kaushik Sunder Rajan (Professor of Anthropology and Social Sciences at University of Chicago).
