scholarly journals Trevor Noah and the contingent politics of racial joking

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 30-48
Author(s):  
Jennalee Donian ◽  
Nicholas Holm
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Political Work ◽  
Close Textual Analysis ◽  
Potential Sources ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Clear Line

This article takes up the transnational comedy career of Trevor Noah as a way to explore how the political work of racial comedy can manifest, circulate and indeed communicate differently across different racial-political contexts. Through the close textual analysis of two key comic performances –“The Daywalker” (2009) and “Son of Patricia” (2018), produced and (initially) circulated in South Africa and the USA, respectively – this article explores the extent to which Noah’s comic treatment of race has shifted between the two contexts. In particular, attention is paid to how Noah incites, navigates and mitigates potential sources of offence surrounding racial anxieties in the two contexts, and how he evokes his own “mixed-race” status in order to open up spaces of permission that allow him to joke about otherwise taboo subjects. Rejecting the claim that the politics of Noah’s comedy is emancipatory or progressive in any straightforward way, by means of formal analyses we argue that his comic treatment of race does not enact any singular politics, but rather that the political work of his racial humour shifts relative to its wider political contexts. Thus, rather than drawing a clear line between light entertainment and politically meaningful humour, this article argues that the political valence of racial joking can be understood as contingent upon wider discourses of race that circulate in national-cultural contexts.

scholarly journals Two Tales about Illness, Ideologies, and Intimate Identities: Sexuality Politics and AIDS in South Africa, 1980–95

2014 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Tsampiras
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Gay Men ◽  
Clinical Psychologist ◽  
The Political ◽  
Hiv Positive ◽  
Aids Activism ◽  
Personal Politics ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Uk

AbstractThis article focuses on the micro-narratives of two individuals whose responses to AIDS were mediated by their sexual identity, AIDS activism and the political context of South Africa during a time of transition. Their experiences were also mediated by well-established metanarratives about AIDS and ‘homosexuality’ created in the USA and the UK which were transplanted and reinforced (with local variations) into South Africa by medico-scientific and political leaders.The nascent process of writing South African AIDS histories provides the opportunity to record responses to AIDS at institutional level, reveal the connections between narratives about AIDS and those responses, and draw on the personal stories of those who were at the nexus of impersonal official responses and the personal politics of AIDS. This article records the experiences of Dennis Sifris, a physician who helped establish one of the first AIDS clinics in South Africa and emptied the dance floors, and Pierre Brouard, a clinical psychologist who was involved in early counselling, support and education initiatives for HIV-positive people, and counselled people about dying, and then about living. Their stories show how, even within government-aligned health care spaces hostile to gay men, they were able to provide support and treatment to people; benefited from international connections with other gay communities; and engaged in socially subversive activities. These oral histories thus provide otherwise hidden insights into the experiences of some gay men at the start of an epidemic that was initially almost exclusively constructed on, and about, gay men’s bodies.

Christian Souls and Griqua Boorlings: Religious and Political Identity in Griquatown

Itinerario ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 205-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Waldman
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Patterns ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Societal Level

The politics of coloured people in twentieth-century South Africa have generally been characterised as marginal from mainstream South African events. Correspondingly, attempts to initiate political developments along cultural or ethnic lines - emphasising Mama or Griqua identity, for example - have been noted primarily for their divisive and factional composition. Such writings focus on overt political action. They highlight either leaders’ involvement with, or opposition to, state structures; or the internal, often petty and frustrated conflicts between leaders, but fail to explain the marginalisation of coloured politics. But this emphasis on ‘the political’ removes from our gaze other, more productive avenues for understanding the identity of mixed-race people in South Africa. Political activity, for the Griqua, cannot be evaluated except through the lens of Christianity. Since religion promises to fulfil people's ambitions through redemption in the afterlife, Griqua-Christian ideas about overt political quests and active campaigning against discrimination - on either an individual or societal level - tended to be deemed unnecessary. As it was God who ultimately meted out punishments or rewards, Griqua people's energies were better used worshipping him. Nonetheless, these same Griqua people lived in the profane world in which - at least during the apartheid era - they were officially classified as ‘coloured’. Their struggles, based primarily on the need for official ethnic recognition as Griqua, were, in effect, political struggles. This partly Griqua, partly coloured identity enabled them considerable political flexibility and produced the complex social patterns explored below. A further distinction underpinning the Griqua-coloured ambiguity was that between inkommers (newcomers) and boorlings (people born to Griqua-town).

Towards a Ghetto Fabulous Township Aesthetic in South Africa: Neoliberal and Nation-Building Archetypes in DStv’s Lokshin Bioskop and eTV’s eKasi: Our Stories

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nkosinathi Selekane
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Economic Opportunity ◽  
Black Film ◽  
Suburban Areas ◽  
Close Textual Analysis ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Way

Television films in South Africa such as the series Lokshin Bioskop and eKasi: Our Stories represent the township space as fabulous and rife with economic opportunity. This is in contrast to the representations that are often depicted by mainstream film, in which the township space is portrayed as manifest with crime, unemployment and decay as in the case of Hijack Stories, Wooden Camera and Tsotsi. This study demonstrates the way in which neoliberal and nation-building archetypes are central in the creation of a ghetto fabulous representation of blackness and the township space. The study employs a close textual analysis of Taxi Cheeseboy and Maid for Me. It is informed by the “ghetto fabulous genre of black film” by Mukherjee in its reading of these new forms of grassroots expression. Moreover, the study delves into the representation of a post-apartheid township amidst the economic and social woes faced by the majority of its dwellers who are still significantly underprivileged. The selected films represent the township exclusively from its quasi-suburban areas which promulgate a picture of a township that has not been neglected by gentrification in post-1994 South Africa.

Trevor Griffiths' ‘Absolute Beginners’: Socialist Humanism and the Television Studio

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-170
Author(s):  
Leah Panos
Keyword(s):  
Textual Analysis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Dramatic Structure ◽  
Close Textual Analysis ◽  
Production Strategies ◽  
Convenient Category ◽  
Visual Style ◽  
Personal Ethics ◽  
Television Studio

This article examines how conventional studio production strategies were active in the construction of political meaning in the 1974 television play ‘Absolute Beginners’, written by Trevor Griffiths. Produced for the BBC anthology series Fall of Eagles, the play dramatises Lenin's involvement with the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party (RSDWP) and explores the contradictions between personal ethics and political necessity. Through close textual analysis and contextual discussion of other plays in the series, this piece demonstrates how shot patterns and spatial and performative devices in ‘Absolute Beginners’ supported the drama's socialist-humanist and feminist themes. Drawing on existing writing about the studio mode, it argues that the qualities of intimacy and presentational distance that it engendered were highly appropriate for the personal and the political dialectic in ‘Absolute Beginners’. While using authorship as a convenient category for referring to the coherence of Griffiths' thematic concerns and dramatic structure during this period, the article complicates notions of the television dramatist as author by arguing for the importance of visual style and showing how ‘ordinary’ studio form was operational in the play's political meanings.

scholarly journals Racialized Landscapes of Tourism: From Jim Crow USA to Apartheid South Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (48) ◽  
pp. 7-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian M. Rogerson ◽  
Jayne M. Rogerson
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Racial Segregation ◽  
Tourism Development ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Tourism Studies ◽  
Jim Crow Era ◽  
The Usa

AbstractTourism studies, including by geographers, give only minor attention to historically-informed research. This article contributes to the limited scholarship on tourism development in South Africa occurring during the turbulent years of apartheid (1948 to 1994). It examines the building of racialized landscapes of tourism with separate (but unequal) facilities for ‘non-Whites’ as compared to Whites. The methodological approach is archival research. Applying a range of archival sources tourism linked to the expanded mobilities of South Africa's ‘non-White’ communities, namely of African, Coloureds (mixed race) and Asians (Indians) is investigated. Under apartheid the growth of ‘non-White’ tourism generated several policy challenges in relation to national government's commitments towards racial segregation. Arguably, the segregated tourism spaces created for ‘non-Whites’ under apartheid exhibit certain parallels with those that emerged in the USA during the Jim Crow era.

scholarly journals Understanding secularisation as indicating the process of the separation of the political and religious

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md Didarul Islam
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Complete Separation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Inclusive Society ◽  
Shed Light

There is a normative position to designate secularisation thesis purely apolitical entity; and this article attempts to shed light on this mountain high debate to understand the extent to which secularisation can be called a complete separation of religious and political. This article argues that since both religion and politics are not completely apolitical entities, therefore the complete separation of secularisation thesis has not been achieved. Maintaining the historical differentiations and cultural contexts of different countries, this research says that secularisation is best to understand from contextual and localised perspectives. Secularisation thesis does not even need to be understood as a complete separation, instead it is a process to establish an inclusive society through establishing religious freedom for all. Besides, this research also contributed in epistemological realm through providing an alternative lens of studying secularisation and showed how this approach can help to study different genre of secularism practised in the USA, France and Bangladesh.

‘VOICES’, MEANING AND ‘HETEROGLOSSIA’ IN PRISONERS OF HOPE (1995)

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-96
Author(s):  
Khatija Bibi Khan
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Political Prisoners ◽  
The Future ◽  
Human Capacity ◽  
Robben Island ◽  
Former Inmates

The documentary film Prisoners of Hope (1995) is a heart-rending account of 1 250 former political prisoners in the notorious Robben Island prison in South Africa. The aim of this article is to explore the narratives of Prisoners of Hope and in the process capture its celebratory mood and reveal the contribution that the prisoners made towards the realisation of a free South Africa. The documentary features interviews with Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, Ahmed Kathrada and other former inmates as they recall and recount the atrocities perpetrated by defenders of the apartheid system and debate the future of South Africa with its ‘new’ political dispensation led by blacks. A textual analysis of Prisoners of Hope will enable one to explore the human capacity to resist, commit oneself to a single goal and live beyond the horrors and traumas of an oppressive and dehumanising system.

Political orientation and moral foundations

2019 ◽  
Vol 118 (11) ◽  
pp. 365-371
Author(s):  
J Dorasamy ◽  
Mr Jirushlan Dorasamy
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
North America ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Open Approach ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
Moral Foundation ◽  
The North

Studies, especially in the North America, have shown a relationship between political orientation and moralfoundation. This study investigated whether moral judgements differ from the political orientation of participantsin South Africa moral judgment and the extent to which moral foundations are influenced by politicalorientation.Further, the study investigated the possibility of similar patterns with the North AmericanConservative-Liberal spectrum and the moral foundation. There were 300participants, 78 males and 222 females,who completed an online questionnaire relating to moral foundation and political orientation. The results partiallysupported the hypothesis relating to Liberal and Conservative orientation in South Africa. Further, this studypartially predicted the Liberal-Conservative orientation with patterns in the moral foundation, whilst showingsimilar findings to the North American studies. A growing rate of a neutral/moderate society is evidenced in SouthAfrica and abroad, thereby showing the emergence of a more open approach to both a political and generalstance.”””

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