Prismatic Performances: Queer South Africa and the Fracturing of the Rainbow Nation by April Sizemore-Barber (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Prismatic Performances: Queer South Africa and the Fracturing of the Rainbow Nation by April Sizemore-Barber Susanna Sacks Sizemore-Barber, April, 2020. Prismatic Performances: Queer South Africa and the Fracturing of the Rainbow Nation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 194 pp. $75.00 (cloth), $34.95 (paper). April Sizemore-Barber's Prismatic Performances: Queer South Africa and the Fracturing of the Rainbow Nation asks what a theory of queer performance that puts Africa first might look like. The book opens at the 2012 Johannesburg Pride Parade, where members of the One in Nine Campaign staged the first die-in, protesting the corporatization of pride parades. The protesters risked their own bodies to challenge the image of the "rainbow nation." Their actions insisted that, seen through the right lens, pride could transform from a spectacle of consumption into a performance of solidarity against inhospitable political systems. The tension between performing for an audience and performing within a community grounds Sizemore-Barber's analytic stance: Where a prism deconstructs light into its many-hued parts, creating a flattened image of a rainbow (nation), a prismatic performance reflects and refracts the emotional investments projected onto it by varied audiences. What remains is not a clearly defined spectrum, but an often messy and ambiguous assemblage of conflicting viewpoints that forces both audience members and performers to encounter their own most deeply held beliefs and desires anew. (7) While the prism recalls Wendy Griswold's (1986) classic "cultural diamond" model of sociological processes of meaning-making, Sizemore-Barber's model brings us into the very moment of performance. Through detailed close readings of individual moments of performance, the book illuminates how individual artists work with and against audience expectations to challenge and expand the place of queerness in contemporary South Africa. Prismatic Performances unfolds across four chapters, analyzing drag performances, media campaigns, choreography, photography, and digital fan forums. Its topical breadth is complemented by an expansive methodology, which moves smoothly among critical theory, formal analysis, [End Page 108] ethnographic interviews, and historiographic interventions. The first chapter compares two white drag queens' conflicting approaches to the postapartheid moment: Pieter-Dirk Uys, who performs an outmoded white Afrikaans femininity to incite conversations about past injustices, and Steven Cohen, whose shocking performances intrude into daily life to insist that violence continues to violate the country's social order. The prism reveals the contextually situated meaning of each performance: tracking Uys's performance from stage to screen, and Cohen's from township to biennale, enables Sizemore-Barber to "chart the different performative tactics used by each to re-envision whiteness and Africanness through the prism of drag" (27). The second chapter moves from the absurdism of drag into the daily negotiations of queer life. Through interviews with members of the Chosen FEW, a Johannesburg-based lesbian activist group, Sizemore-Barber explores how their "performances of self" challenge popular narratives that frame queer lives as outside the bounds of traditional African cultures. The chapter pairs Erving Goffman's understanding of identity performance with a sensitivity to performance context to analyze self-construction as context dependent. The Chosen FEW manage, in Sizemore-Barber's terms, to "live in the as-if": "Within a paradoxical situation such as South Africa's," Sizemore-Barber summarizes, "democratic citizenship does not result in access to cultural citizenship. … Living subjunctively, in this context, is one way they can put their constitutional rights into practice" (51). For the Chosen FEW, the prism demands careful self-presentation to maintain safety while projecting their desired image. The final two chapters confront this tension directly: first, through visual analysis of two artworks that confront the violence against and erasure of Black lesbian experience, and second, in a netnography, or digitally attuned ethnographic analysis, of a fan forum confronting the question of gay rights in South Africa. By emphasizing the medium, visual or digital, these chapters illustrate how prismatic approaches can deepen analysis of audience engagement beyond performance settings. In the third chapter, Zanele Muholi's portraiture and visual arts come into conversation with Mamela Nyamza's performance piece I Stand Corrected to "explore questions of (co) presence, absence, and motion" (87). Through their work, Sizemore-Barber demonstrates...