The ‘Recalcitrant Other’: The Rhetorical Identity and Struggle of Nelson Mandela

Abstract

South Africa’s colonial and apartheid politics of space is the exigency that inspired the struggle rhetoric of Nelson Mandela. Mandela’s rhetorical struggle was premised on archetypal content and in particular the rhetorical imprint articulated as a perilous symbolic journey. The rhetorical imprint is a complex conceptual structure governing thought and message production and is a function of Mandela’s rhetorical struggle and identity. This article explores the complexity of Mandela’s rhetorical identity as the Recalcitrant Other and
his rhetorical struggle as informed by contesting influences such as his  ancestral birthright, cultural upbringing, British mission education, and exposure to a racially constructed hegemonic order. By subversively drawing on his anglophile tendencies, he defied both Empire and the apartheid regime, but without denying his cultural roots.