1,720,977 research outputs found
We are not South African:Decolonizing National Identity in a Post-Apartheid State
Get PDFIn We are not South African, using the theoretical lenses of postcolonialism and posthumanism, I make three arguments: First, nations are not cohesive manifestations of one national imaginary, but are rather comprised of fractured and contradictory social imaginaries. Second, the fragility of the contemporary nation can be traced back to its toxic origin as a colonial construction. Thus, true liberation from ongoing coloniality in postcolonial nations necessitates a challenge to the existence of national identity and borders. Third, the nation is exploitative for both humans andnon-humans alike. As the lives and well-being of humans and non-humans are inextricably interconnected, until liberation from the nation-state and coloniality is achieved for both, both parties will continue to suffer. I support these arguments using a historical analysis of the role that social imaginaries have played in South Africa; an examination of how the Internet contributes to the destabilization of the nation through interviews with South African emigrants; a critical discourse analysis of the discourses surrounding Cape Town Water Crisis and their pertinence to the nation; and by proposing one alternative social imaginary using the southern African ontology of ubuntu.At the heart of these arguments lies the more fundamental assertion about the nature of difference. Colonial logics aspire towards a unity of order, wherein the world functions in predictable and controllable ways. Difference is perceived as a deficit, something that must be tamed and absorbed into sanctioned systems of being, and the nation serves as one of coloniality’s instruments of order, to reduce difference into more manageable unified wholes. In contrast, decolonial logics recognize and celebrate the existence of a multiplicity of difference. Decolonial thinkers envision what Glissant calls a chaos-monde—a world that cannot be systematised. A world, I argue, in which nations cannot exist. In such a world, we must accept that we human beings are not in control and that the planet and all its inhabitants do not exist forour exploitation. Simultaneously, a chaos-monde also opens up new beautiful possibilities of relational, interdependent ways of being in the world, or “staying with the trouble” to borrow Haraway’s words
Brothers from another mother: Seeing the uncanny in US popular media depictions of South Africa
Get PDFThis article examines a pattern of popular US audiovisual media depictions of post-apartheid South Africa, which portray SA as harbouring latent danger. I use these depictions as an entry point into a broader web of articulation that connects various theoretical lenses (including Othering and theories of fear), empirical data, and historical context in order to tell a conjunctural story about the precarity of US exceptionalism and Whiteness. Rather than reading these depictions as a suggestion that SA is a tangible threat of danger to the world, I argue that the strategic formation of these depictions reveals how the US experiences the uncanny (familiar unfamiliar) in SA, another significantly White settler-colonial state, and thus perceives a discursive threat of SA democracy to US exceptionalism on the global stage. This conjuncture, I suggest, reveals a discursive struggle over multicultural global futures and who gets to define democracy in the popular imagination
Africa On Demand:The production and distribution of African narratives through podcasting
Get PDFAfrica has long been subject to the West’s single story about a dark continent, but for Adichie and many African writers before her, such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Chinua Achebe, story can also be a tool of revolution. This chapter addresses the distinction between podcasting and traditional radio, tracing podcasting’s evolution from radio on the continent before identifying the unique benefits offered by this digital medium. Media and communication tend to be studied from two primary perspectives: the transmission view and the ritual view of communication. The podcast is a digital iteration of radio, as reflected in its name, which combines references to the iPod, Apple’s original MP3 player, and the act of broadcasting. Despite the popularity of mobile technology in Africa, several obstacles exist that have slowed the progress of podcasts across the continent: data costs and the digital divide, language, and the limitations on profitability
Whose media studies is it anyway?::A decolonial response to media studies' new materialist inspired self-evaluations
Get PDFThe new materialist turn in media studies has pushed us to wrestle with our definitions of media and media studies. But asking “what” is not sufficient; we need to also ask “who?” Not just who is creating media and who is using it, but more fundamentally, whose concepts and theories of media do we take seriously? Who defines what we mean by “media”? In this theoretical paper, I argue that our presumptions about media studies continue to be informed by the same hegemonic lineage of Western scholarship. While pointing to other existing but marginalised traditions of media scholarship, especially from the Global South, I suggest that a decolonized media studies might be informed by three key logics: planetarity, processuality, and pluriversality. As many others have argued for decolonizing media studies, I focus my argument on the lack of engagement with decolonial perspectives in what has been sometimes described as the new materialist turn in media studies. I draw attention to the ways in which a decolonial orientation to media studies, informed by the above logics, closely resembles the recent material turn in media studies, but that to situate these values as part of the material turn in media studies is to commit epistemic erasure
Whose media studies is it anyway?::A decolonial response to media studies' new materialist inspired self-evaluations
Get PDFThe new materialist turn in media studies has pushed us to wrestle with our definitions of media and media studies. But asking “what” is not sufficient; we need to also ask “who?” Not just who is creating media and who is using it, but more fundamentally, whose concepts and theories of media do we take seriously? Who defines what we mean by “media”? In this theoretical paper, I argue that our presumptions about media studies continue to be informed by the same hegemonic lineage of Western scholarship. While pointing to other existing but marginalised traditions of media scholarship, especially from the Global South, I suggest that a decolonized media studies might be informed by three key logics: planetarity, processuality, and pluriversality. As many others have argued for decolonizing media studies, I focus my argument on the lack of engagement with decolonial perspectives in what has been sometimes described as the new materialist turn in media studies. I draw attention to the ways in which a decolonial orientation to media studies, informed by the above logics, closely resembles the recent material turn in media studies, but that to situate these values as part of the material turn in media studies is to commit epistemic erasure
Whose media studies is it anyway?::A decolonial response to media studies' new materialist inspired self-evaluations
Get PDFThe new materialist turn in media studies has pushed us to wrestle with our definitions of media and media studies. But asking “what” is not sufficient; we need to also ask “who?” Not just who is creating media and who is using it, but more fundamentally, whose concepts and theories of media do we take seriously? Who defines what we mean by “media”? In this theoretical paper, I argue that our presumptions about media studies continue to be informed by the same hegemonic lineage of Western scholarship. While pointing to other existing but marginalised traditions of media scholarship, especially from the Global South, I suggest that a decolonized media studies might be informed by three key logics: planetarity, processuality, and pluriversality. As many others have argued for decolonizing media studies, I focus my argument on the lack of engagement with decolonial perspectives in what has been sometimes described as the new materialist turn in media studies. I draw attention to the ways in which a decolonial orientation to media studies, informed by the above logics, closely resembles the recent material turn in media studies, but that to situate these values as part of the material turn in media studies is to commit epistemic erasure
Whose media studies is it anyway?::A decolonial response to media studies' new materialist inspired self-evaluations
Get PDFThe new materialist turn in media studies has pushed us to wrestle with our definitions of media and media studies. But asking “what” is not sufficient; we need to also ask “who?” Not just who is creating media and who is using it, but more fundamentally, whose concepts and theories of media do we take seriously? Who defines what we mean by “media”? In this theoretical paper, I argue that our presumptions about media studies continue to be informed by the same hegemonic lineage of Western scholarship. While pointing to other existing but marginalised traditions of media scholarship, especially from the Global South, I suggest that a decolonized media studies might be informed by three key logics: planetarity, processuality, and pluriversality. As many others have argued for decolonizing media studies, I focus my argument on the lack of engagement with decolonial perspectives in what has been sometimes described as the new materialist turn in media studies. I draw attention to the ways in which a decolonial orientation to media studies, informed by the above logics, closely resembles the recent material turn in media studies, but that to situate these values as part of the material turn in media studies is to commit epistemic erasure
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