A Politics of the Emergent

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 263-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Nuttall
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
South African ◽  
Public Culture ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Reference Points

This essay attempts to track the changing shape of cultural studies in South Africa, drawing on both local and global reference points. In the first part of the essay, I account for the preoccupations of South African cultural studies from the late 1980s to the late 1990s. In the second part, I reflect on further shifts since 2000. Here I argue for a politics of the emergent, an increasing turn towards the negotiation of the possible, the drawing in of trans-national frames, and the reformulation of theories of race in the aftermath of resistance politics. Studies of popular culture during this period increasingly come to be superseded by a focus on public culture and on circulation. The essay concludes by considering current contests in cultural studies in South Africa and with a reflection on its current place within a reconstituted public intellectual space.

Apocalypticism and Popular Culture in South Africa: An Overview and Update

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 219-236
Author(s):  
Margaret Mollett
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
South African ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
South African Context ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
Book Of Revelation ◽  
African Context ◽  
Pentecostal Churches

Abstract Apocalypticism, in the form of premillennial dispensationalism, based on foundational texts in Daniel, 2 Thessalonians and the book of Revelation, took root in South Africa through missionaries from the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century. At first associated with Pentecostal churches and splinter groups from traditional churches belief in an imminent rapture followed by the tribulation, the millennium and final white throne judgment characterise an ever-widening circle of so-called charismatic groups. This heightening of expectation can mainly be ascribed to the influence of Hal Lindsey during the 70s and 80s and Tim LaHaye during the first decade of the 21st century. Rapid growth in media technology and the popularity of religious fiction has resulted in a merging of apocalyptic expectation with popular culture. This article probes the nature of “popular culture” and its relation to religion in South African context, and indicates a route for further enquiry and research. It concludes with the question, “What obligation does this lay on the scholarly guild?”

Butler, Frederick Guy (1918–2001)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Voss
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Racial Segregation ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Eastern Cape ◽  
World War ◽  
Second World ◽  
English Heritage

Guy Butler, poet, playwright, director, historian, autobiographer, essayist, academic and public intellectual, was born and raised in the Eastern Cape in South Africa. He began his education at the Cradock High School and Rhodes University, and served in North Africa and Italy during the Second World War. Study at Oxford and a lectureship at Witwatersrand University led to his position as chair of English at Rhodes in 1952, the year that Stranger to Europe: Poems, 1939–1949 was published. His traditionally oriented poetry seeks human connection across the barriers of history, culture and legally enforced racial segregation. An innovative teacher, he promoted the study of South African English literature and founded departments of speech and drama, linguistics, and journalism at Rhodes University. Throughout his life he strove to reconcile his local loyalties to the Eastern Cape, to his Settler forebears, and to his English heritage — he established the 1820 Monument, the National English Literary Museum, the Grahamstown Festival, and the Institute for the Study of English in Africa — with an inclusive South African national identity. He translated Afrikaans poetry into English, and in plays such as Richard Gush of Salem and Demea celebrated representative historical and imagined figures of interracial and intercultural rapprochement.

Intimate crimes: heroin and the rise of amaphara in South Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-79
Author(s):  
Mark Hunter
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Drug Policy ◽  
Youth Unemployment ◽  
Public Culture ◽  
National Context ◽  
Heroin Users ◽  
Unemployment Rates

ABSTRACTThe term ‘amaphara’, possibly derived from ‘parasites’, burst into South African public culture in the 2010s to refer to petty thieves addicted to a heroin-based drug locally called whoonga/nyaope. Drawing on ethnography and media sources to interrogate the rise of ‘amaphara’, this paper argues that South Africa's heroin epidemic magnifies the attention – criticism but also sympathy – directed toward marginalised black men who have few prospects for social mobility. It locates amaphara in the national context where drug policy is largely punitive and youth unemployment rates are painfully high, but gives particular attention to families’ and communities’ experiences with intimate crimes, especially petty thefts. It further shows that amaphara is a contested term: heroin users are brothers, sons and grandchildren and they gain most of their income not from crime but by undertaking useful piece work in communities.

scholarly journals Freshlyground and the possibilities of new identities in post-apartheid South Africa

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Balfour
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
South African ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
New Historicism ◽  
Popular Art ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Art Forms

Popular music and indeed popular art forms struggle for critical attention in the academy (Larkin, 1992). Relegated to a focus on performance, or to peripheral sub-disciplines such as cultural studies, the study of popular art forms is risky terrain in higher education (Wicke, 1990). Instead, and particularly within the humanities, it has been claimed that the study of canonised art forms (Viljoen & Van Der Merwe, 2004) may enable the student to analyse a range of texts with equal skill and superior insight. This paper deals with both the popular and the interdisciplinary in relation to a theorisation of the lyrics of popular South African contemporary music group Freshlyground and the possibilities for a post-Apartheid identity explored in these lyrics through the theoretical lenses of New Historicism and Cosmopolitanism.

Reframing Xenophobia in South Africa as Colour-Blind: The Limits of the Afro Phobia Thesis

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-444
Author(s):  
Amanuel Isak Tewolde
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Conflict Theory ◽  
Black African ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Online Newspaper ◽  
Close Proximity ◽  
Realistic Conflict Theory

Many scholars and South African politicians characterize the widespread anti-foreigner sentiment and violence in South Africa as dislike against migrants and refugees of African origin which they named ‘Afro-phobia’. Drawing on online newspaper reports and academic sources, this paper rejects the Afro-phobia thesis and argues that other non-African migrants such as Asians (Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis and Chinese) are also on the receiving end of xenophobia in post-apartheid South Africa. I contend that any ‘outsider’ (White, Asian or Black African) who lives and trades in South African townships and informal settlements is scapegoated and attacked. I term this phenomenon ‘colour-blind xenophobia’. By proposing this analytical framework and integrating two theoretical perspectives — proximity-based ‘Realistic Conflict Theory (RCT)’ and Neocosmos’ exclusivist citizenship model — I contend that xenophobia in South Africa targets those who are in close proximity to disadvantaged Black South Africans and who are deemed outsiders (e.g., Asian, African even White residents and traders) and reject arguments that describe xenophobia in South Africa as targeting Black African refugees and migrants.

Region of Birth and Child Mortality among Black Migrants to South Africa: Is there a foreign-born advantage?

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiffany L Green ◽  
Amos C Peters
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Child Mortality ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Black Immigrants ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Region Of Origin ◽  
Child Deaths

Much of the existing evidence for the healthy immigrant advantage comes from developed countries. We investigate whether an immigrant health advantage exists in South Africa, an important emerging economy.  Using the 2001 South African Census, this study examines differences in child mortality between native-born South African and immigrant blacks.  We find that accounting for region of origin is critical: immigrants from southern Africa are more likely to experience higher lifetime child mortality compared to the native-born population.  Further, immigrants from outside of southern Africa are less likely than both groups to experience child deaths.  Finally, in contrast to patterns observed in developed countries, we detect a strong relationship between schooling and child mortality among black immigrants.

Some Reflections on Reparation in Post-Apartheid South Africa, using a Couple Therapy Intervention as a Microcosm of South African Society

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Hill ◽  
Sylvia Poss
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Couple Therapy ◽  
South African Society ◽  
Depressive Position ◽  
Central Hypothesis ◽  
Transference And Countertransference ◽  
Constructive Engagement ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Therapy Intervention

The paper addresses the question of reparation in post-apartheid South Africa. The central hypothesis of the paper is that in South Africa current traumas or losses, such as the 2008 xenophobic attacks, may activate a ‘shared unconscious phantasy’ of irreparable damage inflicted by apartheid on the collective psyche of the South African nation which could block constructive engagement and healing. A brief couple therapy intervention by a white therapist with a black couple is used as a ‘microcosm’ to explore this question. The impact of an extreme current loss, when earlier losses have been sustained, is explored. Additionally, the impact of racial difference on the transference and countertransference between the therapist and the couple is explored to illustrate factors complicating the productive grieving and working through of the depressive position towards reparation.

The Final ‘Thank You’

Derrida Today ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-36
Author(s):  
Grant Farred
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Political Transition ◽  
The Other ◽  
World Cup ◽  
The Core ◽  
Nelson Mandela ◽  
Black President ◽  
The Moment

‘The Final “Thank You”’ uses the work of Jacques Derrida and Friedrich Nietzsche to think the occasion of the 1995 rugby World Cup, hosted by the newly democratic South Africa. This paper deploys Nietzsche's Zarathustra to critique how a figure such as Nelson Mandela is understood as a ‘Superman’ or an ‘Overhuman’ in the moment of political transition. The philosophical focus of the paper, however, turns on the ‘thank yous’ exchanged by the white South African rugby captain, François Pienaar, and the black president at the event of the Springbok victory. It is the value, and the proximity and negation, of the ‘thank yous’ – the relation of one to the other – that constitutes the core of the article. 1

Apartheid Aesthetics and Insignificant Art

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-69
Author(s):  
Stephanus Muller
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Secondary School ◽  
South African ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Art Songs ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Small House ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Selection Of

Stephanus Le Roux Marais (1896−1979) lived in Graaff-Reinet, South Africa, for nearly a quarter of a century. He taught music at the local secondary school, composed most of his extended output of Afrikaans art songs, and painted a number of small landscapes in the garden of his small house, nestled in the bend of the Sunday’s River. Marais’s music earned him a position of cultural significance in the decades of Afrikaner dominance of South Africa. His best-known songs (“Heimwee,” “Kom dans, Klaradyn,” and “Oktobermaand”) earned him the local appellation of “the Afrikaans Schubert” and were famously sung all over the world by the soprano Mimi Coertse. The role his ouevre played in the construction of a so-called European culture in Africa is uncontested. Yet surprisingly little attention has been paid to the rich evocations of landscape encountered in Marais’s work. Contextualized by a selection of Marais’s paintings, this article glosses the index of landscape in this body of cultural production. The prevalence of landscape in Marais’s work and the range of its expression contribute novel perspectives to understanding colonial constructions of the twentieth-century South African landscape. Like the vast, empty, and ancient landscape of the Karoo, where Marais lived during the last decades of his life, his music assumes specificity not through efforts to prioritize individual expression, but through the distinct absence of such efforts. Listening for landscape in Marais’s songs, one encounters the embrace of generic musical conventions as a condition for the construction of a particular national identity. Colonial white landscape, Marais’s work seems to suggest, is deprived of a compelling musical aesthetic by its very embrace and desired possession of that landscape.

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