ABSTRACT
If, as Felman and Laub (1992: 115) observe, discourses exist in a state of ‘constant obligation’ to the ‘woes of history’, then reading history reinforces an understanding of how identities are continually shaped (and indeed reinvented) by context. Identity formation is crucially about tangible experiences that have some connection to strategies of bearing witness. My understanding is that this could be something that is familiar in the form of accumulated knowledge. Such knowledge, I believe, is about the life history of the ‘self’, constructed by a series of events intimately connected to the ‘private’ and ‘public’. The first and last are issues integrally related to the bios (life) in which history assumes primary significance in the shaping of personality. Similarly, the real, tangible, personal, historical and politicised experiences of Achmat, Sibongile and Pegge in the epigraphs to this chapter, constitute affirmative statements about living, presence, inclusivity and belonging. These are simultaneously utterances about identity, sexuality, culture, disease, oppression and the power that shapes our identities. These assertions also disclose ongoing contestations about homosexuality that many of us who are sexual minorities experience.
