A poetics of sensuality: Xenophobia and same-sex intimacy in cane/cain

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haseenah Ebrahim
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Short Film ◽  
Sexual Intimacy ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
The South ◽  
Asian Migration ◽  
Brown Bodies

This article offers a reading of the ways in which the short film, cane/cain (directed by Jordache Ellapen, adopts a poetics of sensuality to both unsettle and undergird its themes of South Asian migration, sexual intimacy and xenophobia in South Africa. While both homosexuality and xenophobia are not uncommon sites of public discourses in South Africa, cane/cain unearths the less visible faces of both by centring Brown bodies in corporeal collisions of sexual intimacy and of xenophobic violence to disrupt normative and binary categories of sex, race and citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa. Utilizing the symbolic currency of sugarcane as an aesthetic and narrative pivot, cane/cain constructs a tension between the cinematic pleasure elicited by its poetics of sensuality and its discomfiting themes of homosexual intimacy and xenophobic intolerance to insert the South Asian subject into the discourses of race, sexuality and nationality in South Africa.

From the Promise of Samosas to Hosting Bollywood Blowouts: Innovations in Reaching Out to the South Asian Community

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahul Sharma ◽  
Razia Kosi ◽  
Ulash Thakore-Dunlap ◽  
Sushama Kirtikar
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
The South ◽  
Asian Community ◽  
South Asian Community

International Listening Post report summary: the world at the dawn of 2019

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-124
Author(s):  
Sandy Henderson ◽  
Ulrike Beland ◽  
Dimitrios Vonofakos
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Faroe Islands ◽  
The South ◽  
The World ◽  
The Uk

On or around 9 January 2019, twenty-two Listening Posts were conducted in nineteen countries: Canada, Chile, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, Germany (Frankfurt and Berlin), Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy (two in Milan and one in the South), Peru, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, and the UK. This report synthesises the reports of those Listening Posts and organises the data yielded by them into common themes and patterns.

Labels, Histories, Politics: Indian/South Asian Dance on the Global Stage

2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
AVANTHI MEDURI
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
First Century ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The South ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Indian Nation ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Uk

In this paper, I discuss issues revolving around history, historiography, alterity, difference and otherness concealed in the doubled Indian/South Asian label used to describe Indian/South Asian dance genres in the UK. The paper traces the historical genealogy of the South Asian label to US, Indian and British contexts and describes how the South Asian enunciation fed into Indian nation-state historiography and politics in the 1950s. I conclude by describing how Akademi: South Asian Dance, a leading London based arts organisation, explored the ambivalence in the doubled Indian/South Asian label by renaming itself in 1997, and forging new local/global networks of communication and artistic exchange between Indian and British based dancers and choreographers at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Heritage

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omar Shaikh ◽  
Stefano Bonino
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Online Video ◽  
The South ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Public ◽  
Video Footage ◽  
Community Heritage ◽  
Personal Accounts ◽  
The Way

The Colourful Heritage Project (CHP) is the first community heritage focused charitable initiative in Scotland aiming to preserve and to celebrate the contributions of early South Asian and Muslim migrants to Scotland. It has successfully collated a considerable number of oral stories to create an online video archive, providing first-hand accounts of the personal journeys and emotions of the arrival of the earliest generation of these migrants in Scotland and highlighting the inspiring lessons that can be learnt from them. The CHP’s aims are first to capture these stories, second to celebrate the community’s achievements, and third to inspire present and future South Asian, Muslim and Scottish generations. It is a community-led charitable project that has been actively documenting a collection of inspirational stories and personal accounts, uniquely told by the protagonists themselves, describing at first hand their stories and adventures. These range all the way from the time of partition itself to resettling in Pakistan, and then to their final accounts of arriving in Scotland. The video footage enables the public to see their facial expressions, feel their emotions and hear their voices, creating poignant memories of these great men and women, and helping to gain a better understanding of the South Asian and Muslim community’s earliest days in Scotland.

Alternate Futures after the South Asian Nuclear Tests: Pokhran as Prologue

Asian Survey ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 504-524 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wade L. Huntley
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
The South ◽  
Nuclear Tests

Foreigners' Rights to Work and Fair Labour Practices in South Africa: A Review of the South African Labour Legislation and Jurisprudence

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andre Mangu
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
South African ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
The South ◽  
Legislation And Jurisprudence ◽  
Foreign Nationals ◽  
Lay Persons ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Labour Legislation

After several decades of apartheid rule, which denied human rights to the majority of the population on the ground of race and came to be regarded as a crime against humanity, South Africa adopted its first democratic Constitution in the early 1990s. The 1996 Constitution, which succeeded the 1993 interim Constitution, is considered one of the most progressive in the world. In its founding provisions, it states that South Africa is a democratic state founded on human dignity, the achievement of equality, the advancement of human rights and freedoms. The Constitution enshrines fundamental human rights in a justiciable Bill of Rights as a cornerstone of democracy. Unfortunately, in the eyes of a number of politicians, officials and lay-persons, the rights in the Bill of Rights accrue to South African citizens only. Xenophobia, which has been rampant since the end of apartheid, seems to support the idea that foreigners should not enjoy these rights. Foreign nationals have often been accused of posing a threat to South African citizens with regard to employment opportunities. In light of the South African legislation and jurisprudence, this article affirms the position of the South African labour law that foreign nationals are indeed protected by the Constitution and entitled to rights in the Bill of Rights, including the rights to work and fair labour practices.

Transnational Habitus and Sociability in the City: Zimbabwean Migrants’ Experiences in Johannesburg, South Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Khangelani Moyo
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Field Research ◽  
The South ◽  
Economic Networks ◽  
Social Field ◽  
Transnational Migrants ◽  
Telephone Calls ◽  
The City

Drawing on field research and a survey of 150 Zimbabwean migrants in Johannesburg, this paper explores the dimensions of migrants’ transnational experiences in the urban space. I discuss the use of communication platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook as well as other means such as telephone calls in fostering the embedding of transnational migrants within both the Johannesburg and the Zimbabwean socio-economic environments. I engage this migrant-embedding using Bourdieusian concepts of “transnational habitus” and “transnational social field,” which are migration specific variations of Bourdieu’s original concepts of “habitus” and “social field.” In deploying these Bourdieusian conceptual tools, I observe that the dynamics of South–South migration as observed in the Zimbabwean migrants are different to those in the South–North migration streams and it is important to move away from using the same lens in interpreting different realities. For Johannesburg-based migrants to operate within the socio-economic networks produced in South Africa and in Zimbabwe, they need to actively acquire a transnational habitus. I argue that migrants’ cultivation of networks in Johannesburg is instrumental, purposive, and geared towards achieving specific and immediate goals, and latently leads to the development and sustenance of flexible forms of permanency in the transnational urban space.

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