History and the Technopolitics of Identity

Abstract

This article explores the history of nuclear systems and computers in apartheid South Africa, considering these systems – and apartheid more generally – as forms of ‘technopolitics’, hybrids of technical systems and political practices that produced new forms of power and agency. Both systems were exceptionally important to the apartheid state, not only as tools but also as symbols. Equally significant, both came to serve as focal points for Western governments and international anti-apartheid activists, who fought to limit South Africa’s access to these systems. We argue that nuclear systems enacted the technopolitics of national identity, while computers expressed a technopolitics of social identity.