Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2022.2055869
Brooks Marmon
Abstract In 1957, George Loft, an American Quaker, arrived in Southern Rhodesia (colonial Zimbabwe) as the field representative of the American Friends Service Committee. In his effort to help the region navigate a period of intense political change in a peaceful manner, Loft cultivated diverse contacts during three years in southern Africa. His attempts to ostensibly serve as a neutral facilitator generally rebounded to the favor of the white settler establishment. While Loft’s often stumbling efforts to steer the region away from violent political conflict were unsuccessful, his shaky balancing act illuminates how quickly an already marginal space for compromise and cooperation across racial divides evaporated. It became virtually impossible to maintain a perception of neutrality. Beyond the evolution and views of the political characters he encountered, Loft’s tenure offers critical context on the demise of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and the rise of Zimbabwe’s armed liberation struggle.
1957年，美国贵格会教徒乔治·洛夫特(George Loft)作为美国友会服务委员会(American Friends Service Committee)的实地代表抵达南罗得西亚(殖民地津巴布韦)。为了帮助该地区以和平的方式度过一段激烈的政治变革时期，洛夫特在南部非洲的三年里建立了各种各样的联系。他表面上试图扮演中立调解人的角色，但最终却得到了白人定居者的支持。虽然洛夫特试图引导该地区远离暴力政治冲突的努力屡屡失败，但他摇摇欲坠的平衡行为表明，种族分歧之间本已处于边缘的妥协与合作空间是如何迅速消失的。几乎不可能保持中立的观念。除了他所遇到的政治人物的演变和观点之外，洛夫特的任期为罗得西亚和尼亚萨兰联邦的灭亡以及津巴布韦武装解放斗争的兴起提供了重要的背景。
{"title":"Neutrality of a special type: George Loft’s abortive racial reconciliation in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 1957–1960","authors":"Brooks Marmon","doi":"10.1080/17533171.2022.2055869","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2022.2055869","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In 1957, George Loft, an American Quaker, arrived in Southern Rhodesia (colonial Zimbabwe) as the field representative of the American Friends Service Committee. In his effort to help the region navigate a period of intense political change in a peaceful manner, Loft cultivated diverse contacts during three years in southern Africa. His attempts to ostensibly serve as a neutral facilitator generally rebounded to the favor of the white settler establishment. While Loft’s often stumbling efforts to steer the region away from violent political conflict were unsuccessful, his shaky balancing act illuminates how quickly an already marginal space for compromise and cooperation across racial divides evaporated. It became virtually impossible to maintain a perception of neutrality. Beyond the evolution and views of the political characters he encountered, Loft’s tenure offers critical context on the demise of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and the rise of Zimbabwe’s armed liberation struggle.","PeriodicalId":43901,"journal":{"name":"Safundi-The Journal of South African and American Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"417 - 434"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81745646","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2022.2062173
C. Stobie
Abstract The Covid-19 pandemic has increased the vulnerabilities of groups including lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) individuals, as well as migrants. Zeyn Joukhadar’s novel, The Thirty Names of Night (2020), comprises two alternating narratives of three generations of Syrian Americans questing to establish their identities in societies that quell otherness. Drawing on the insights of Jean-Michel Ganteau, I trace the novel’s representations of vulnerability, but supplement Ganteau’s theoretical analysis with another category, that of resistance, illustrated by the intersectional queer and trans resistance Joukhadar’s text limns. This analysis is informed by work by Judith Butler and Jack Halberstam. I argue that while The Thirty Names of Night represents the vulnerability of non-hegemonic characters, it emphasizes the resistance, collective strength and creative agency of such individuals. Reading this internationally published text during a pandemic enables an empathetic understanding of intersectional struggles to prevail against prejudices and othering.
新冠肺炎疫情加剧了女同性恋、双性恋、男同性恋、跨性别和酷儿(LGBTQ)群体以及移民的脆弱性。Zeyn Joukhadar的小说《夜的三十名》(The Thirty Names of Night, 2020)由两个交替的叙事组成，讲述了三代叙利亚裔美国人试图在压制异类的社会中建立自己的身份。根据让-米歇尔·甘多的见解，我追溯了小说中对脆弱的表现，但补充了甘多的另一个理论分析，即抵抗，由Joukhadar的文本描述中交叉的酷儿和跨性别抵抗所说明。这一分析是由朱迪思·巴特勒和杰克·哈伯斯坦的研究得出的。我认为，虽然《夜的三十名》代表了非霸权角色的脆弱性，但它强调了这些个体的抵抗、集体力量和创造力。在大流行期间阅读这篇国际出版的文本，可以对战胜偏见和其他因素的交叉斗争产生同理心的理解。
{"title":"Taking wing: Vulnerability and queer/trans resistance in The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar","authors":"C. Stobie","doi":"10.1080/17533171.2022.2062173","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2022.2062173","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Covid-19 pandemic has increased the vulnerabilities of groups including lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) individuals, as well as migrants. Zeyn Joukhadar’s novel, The Thirty Names of Night (2020), comprises two alternating narratives of three generations of Syrian Americans questing to establish their identities in societies that quell otherness. Drawing on the insights of Jean-Michel Ganteau, I trace the novel’s representations of vulnerability, but supplement Ganteau’s theoretical analysis with another category, that of resistance, illustrated by the intersectional queer and trans resistance Joukhadar’s text limns. This analysis is informed by work by Judith Butler and Jack Halberstam. I argue that while The Thirty Names of Night represents the vulnerability of non-hegemonic characters, it emphasizes the resistance, collective strength and creative agency of such individuals. Reading this internationally published text during a pandemic enables an empathetic understanding of intersectional struggles to prevail against prejudices and othering.","PeriodicalId":43901,"journal":{"name":"Safundi-The Journal of South African and American Studies","volume":"5 1","pages":"353 - 374"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89067661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2022.2048486
R. Ross
Abstract This article details the 1966–1969 “Banks Campaign,” a movement led by seminarians, clergy, and civil rights activists to pressure ten American banks to stop lending money to the South African apartheid government. Ultimately successful, the Banks Campaign served as a catalyst for many similar, and eventually larger, anti-apartheid solidarity campaigns that were focused on wrestling control over the circulation of money and goods to and from South Africa. Despite its success and significance, scholars have largely overlooked the Banks Campaign. Based on archival research and interviews with some of the movement’s protagonists, this article deepens our understanding of this central component of the early anti-apartheid movement in the United States.
{"title":"Moving the mountain of apartheid: the 1966–1969 Banks Campaign and the rise of economic tools to end South African apartheid","authors":"R. Ross","doi":"10.1080/17533171.2022.2048486","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2022.2048486","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article details the 1966–1969 “Banks Campaign,” a movement led by seminarians, clergy, and civil rights activists to pressure ten American banks to stop lending money to the South African apartheid government. Ultimately successful, the Banks Campaign served as a catalyst for many similar, and eventually larger, anti-apartheid solidarity campaigns that were focused on wrestling control over the circulation of money and goods to and from South Africa. Despite its success and significance, scholars have largely overlooked the Banks Campaign. Based on archival research and interviews with some of the movement’s protagonists, this article deepens our understanding of this central component of the early anti-apartheid movement in the United States.","PeriodicalId":43901,"journal":{"name":"Safundi-The Journal of South African and American Studies","volume":"9 1","pages":"303 - 329"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82745388","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2022.2094130
R. Levine
Abstract In 1912, in a grand public spectacle, the majority of the white population of the Witwatersrand mobilized against perceived “outrages” on women and children committed by African men in either a consensual or non-consensual manner: the “Black Peril.” As a case study, this paper focuses on select popular culture sources generated by this particular “scare” as its evidentiary base. It builds on prior historiographical appeals to affect and emotion in understanding “Black Peril” scares. The paper reexamines the “Black Peril” by attending, first, to its discursive output and therein to embodied, affective, or emotional, and automatic, or unconscious, “ways of knowing.” Second, it reads this discourse alongside non-discursive, unconscious, or automatic, baseline understandings of race and segregation from which the outbursts sprang. The paper tentatively suggests the possibility of a group identity that was not primarily constituted against, or through, fear and anxiety (of Africans). Instead, it was made in a self-referential and self-witnessing manner, and was self-assured, perhaps even imperious.
{"title":"Revisiting the ‘Black Peril,’ South Africa, circa 1912: Popular Culture, Group Identity, and New Ways of Knowing.","authors":"R. Levine","doi":"10.1080/17533171.2022.2094130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2022.2094130","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In 1912, in a grand public spectacle, the majority of the white population of the Witwatersrand mobilized against perceived “outrages” on women and children committed by African men in either a consensual or non-consensual manner: the “Black Peril.” As a case study, this paper focuses on select popular culture sources generated by this particular “scare” as its evidentiary base. It builds on prior historiographical appeals to affect and emotion in understanding “Black Peril” scares. The paper reexamines the “Black Peril” by attending, first, to its discursive output and therein to embodied, affective, or emotional, and automatic, or unconscious, “ways of knowing.” Second, it reads this discourse alongside non-discursive, unconscious, or automatic, baseline understandings of race and segregation from which the outbursts sprang. The paper tentatively suggests the possibility of a group identity that was not primarily constituted against, or through, fear and anxiety (of Africans). Instead, it was made in a self-referential and self-witnessing manner, and was self-assured, perhaps even imperious.","PeriodicalId":43901,"journal":{"name":"Safundi-The Journal of South African and American Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"398 - 416"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91386825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2021.2012976
Stéphane Robolin
Shane Graham’s Cultural Entanglements: Langston Hughes and the Rise of African and Caribbean Literature offers a broad inquiry into black transnational relation and aesthetics by way of Langston Hughes’s literary exchanges. Graham, who builds off his splendid work as co-editor (with John Walters) of a volume of correspondence between Hughes and numerous Drum-era South African writers, engagingly moves, here, from archive to argument. No classic single-author study, Cultural Entanglements is a materialist literary history that casts Hughes as “catalyst and hub for the network of black Atlantic writers that helped usher in the era of postcolonial literature.” Reading Hughes alongside key contemporaries and successors – primarily, Claude McKay, Jacques Roumain, Aimé Césaire, Peter Abrahams, Es’kia Mphahlele, and Paule Marshall – Graham probes the ways they expressed the meanings of Africa and blackness to one another and their readers. He assiduously combs through Hughes’s bountiful correspondence with Caribbean and African authors as well as their published work (poems, plays, novels, speeches, anthologies) to define a 20-century pan-African aesthetics perpetually negotiating commonalities and differences. Resolutely part of the transnational turn in black literary studies, Cultural Entanglements joins a growing effort by scholars to break Hughes and other authors out of the strictly national frame to which they have long been confined. Given that his early years were spent – and his iconic poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” was composed – shuttling between the U.S. Midwest and Mexico, Hughes is an ideal core subject for this kind of study. Like Vera Kutzinski’s The Worlds of Langston Hughes and Ryan Kernan’s forthcoming New World Maker, both of which track Hughes’s movements and fecund literary affiliations beyond the United States to the Caribbean, South America, Western Europe, and the Soviet Union, Cultural Entanglements commits itself to a wider, planetary scale. But whereas Kutzinski and Kernan variously reread Hughes and his work abroad through the prism of translation, Graham casts black transnationalism, generally, and Hughes’s oeuvre and engagements, specifically, through the concept-metaphor of entanglement. For Graham, entanglement is a materially mediated process made possible by the physical circulation of people and literary production that help knit together what he calls “fellow feeling.” The virtue of entanglement is that it metaphorically names a range of conditions. Most obviously, it emphasizes the willed political and aesthetic connections sought by black writers in different countries: “the sense of solidarity, community, and identity that the circuits of cultural exchange provided to black people scattered over oceans and continents.” But it equally highlights: the knotty complications that meet such pursuits; cross-contamination of aesthetic philosophies and practices, intentional or not; and complicities between individua
{"title":"Cultural entanglements: Langston Hughes and the rise of African and Caribbean literature","authors":"Stéphane Robolin","doi":"10.1080/17533171.2021.2012976","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2021.2012976","url":null,"abstract":"Shane Graham’s Cultural Entanglements: Langston Hughes and the Rise of African and Caribbean Literature offers a broad inquiry into black transnational relation and aesthetics by way of Langston Hughes’s literary exchanges. Graham, who builds off his splendid work as co-editor (with John Walters) of a volume of correspondence between Hughes and numerous Drum-era South African writers, engagingly moves, here, from archive to argument. No classic single-author study, Cultural Entanglements is a materialist literary history that casts Hughes as “catalyst and hub for the network of black Atlantic writers that helped usher in the era of postcolonial literature.” Reading Hughes alongside key contemporaries and successors – primarily, Claude McKay, Jacques Roumain, Aimé Césaire, Peter Abrahams, Es’kia Mphahlele, and Paule Marshall – Graham probes the ways they expressed the meanings of Africa and blackness to one another and their readers. He assiduously combs through Hughes’s bountiful correspondence with Caribbean and African authors as well as their published work (poems, plays, novels, speeches, anthologies) to define a 20-century pan-African aesthetics perpetually negotiating commonalities and differences. Resolutely part of the transnational turn in black literary studies, Cultural Entanglements joins a growing effort by scholars to break Hughes and other authors out of the strictly national frame to which they have long been confined. Given that his early years were spent – and his iconic poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” was composed – shuttling between the U.S. Midwest and Mexico, Hughes is an ideal core subject for this kind of study. Like Vera Kutzinski’s The Worlds of Langston Hughes and Ryan Kernan’s forthcoming New World Maker, both of which track Hughes’s movements and fecund literary affiliations beyond the United States to the Caribbean, South America, Western Europe, and the Soviet Union, Cultural Entanglements commits itself to a wider, planetary scale. But whereas Kutzinski and Kernan variously reread Hughes and his work abroad through the prism of translation, Graham casts black transnationalism, generally, and Hughes’s oeuvre and engagements, specifically, through the concept-metaphor of entanglement. For Graham, entanglement is a materially mediated process made possible by the physical circulation of people and literary production that help knit together what he calls “fellow feeling.” The virtue of entanglement is that it metaphorically names a range of conditions. Most obviously, it emphasizes the willed political and aesthetic connections sought by black writers in different countries: “the sense of solidarity, community, and identity that the circuits of cultural exchange provided to black people scattered over oceans and continents.” But it equally highlights: the knotty complications that meet such pursuits; cross-contamination of aesthetic philosophies and practices, intentional or not; and complicities between individua","PeriodicalId":43901,"journal":{"name":"Safundi-The Journal of South African and American Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"299 - 302"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85475113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2021.1994695
Carolyn Ownbey
{"title":"Postcolonial disaster: narrating catastrophe in the twenty-first century","authors":"Carolyn Ownbey","doi":"10.1080/17533171.2021.1994695","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2021.1994695","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43901,"journal":{"name":"Safundi-The Journal of South African and American Studies","volume":"320 1","pages":"297 - 298"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78116379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2021.2014178
Philip Aghoghovwia
{"title":"Making a living as a scholar","authors":"Philip Aghoghovwia","doi":"10.1080/17533171.2021.2014178","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2021.2014178","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43901,"journal":{"name":"Safundi-The Journal of South African and American Studies","volume":"5 1","pages":"221 - 222"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84757319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2021.1989820
L. Englund
ABSTRACT This paper examines two autobiographical responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa from the perspective of responsibility and rights. The analysis draws on interdisciplinary studies of the epidemic and its effects on South African communities. Memoirs by Edwin Cameron and Sister Abegail Ntleko address challenges in South Africa with regard to attitudes toward and treatment of HIV-infected people. Both writers use their texts to advocate for social and political responsibility and for the rights of those infected. Rian Malan’s essays function as a counterpoint, bringing into focus controversial questions about the role of funding and reliable statistics for the epidemic. The topic is relevant in a South African context where antiretroviral treatment was met with skepticism in official political discourse. Representations of responsibilities and rights as well as official responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic have been additionally reexamined in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, giving the epidemic renewed relevance.
{"title":"The HIV/AIDS epidemic revisited in times of COVID-19: advocating for responsibility and rights in South African writing","authors":"L. Englund","doi":"10.1080/17533171.2021.1989820","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2021.1989820","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper examines two autobiographical responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa from the perspective of responsibility and rights. The analysis draws on interdisciplinary studies of the epidemic and its effects on South African communities. Memoirs by Edwin Cameron and Sister Abegail Ntleko address challenges in South Africa with regard to attitudes toward and treatment of HIV-infected people. Both writers use their texts to advocate for social and political responsibility and for the rights of those infected. Rian Malan’s essays function as a counterpoint, bringing into focus controversial questions about the role of funding and reliable statistics for the epidemic. The topic is relevant in a South African context where antiretroviral treatment was met with skepticism in official political discourse. Representations of responsibilities and rights as well as official responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic have been additionally reexamined in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, giving the epidemic renewed relevance.","PeriodicalId":43901,"journal":{"name":"Safundi-The Journal of South African and American Studies","volume":"111 1","pages":"262 - 279"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86238169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2021.2020454
S. Graham
{"title":"A tribute to Karin Shapiro, outgoing co-editor for Safundi","authors":"S. Graham","doi":"10.1080/17533171.2021.2020454","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2021.2020454","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43901,"journal":{"name":"Safundi-The Journal of South African and American Studies","volume":"43 1","pages":"187 - 188"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77409287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2021.1992095
Kenton Butcher
ABSTRACT This essay analyzes Trevor Noah’s memoir, Born a Crime, and the narrator’s movement between racialized spaces, times, and identities in postapartheid South Africa. In spite of Noah’s self-identification as Black, social interactions interpellate him as white or Coloured, which frequently leads to conflict. As a means of survival, he mobilizes cultural knowledge – particularly language – to diffuse tension, influence interpretations of his body, and access socioeconomic advantages or escape disadvantages that accumulate in racialized spaces. I argue that the confessional form is an ideal genre to represent racial ambiguity because the genre itself, like the ambiguous narrator, operates upon a complex economy of revelation and concealment. The essay concludes by analyzing Noah’s comedy career and movement to the United States in order to explore transnational movements of the racially ambiguous body and the potential and pitfalls of representing racial ambiguity in twenty-first-century cultural production.
{"title":"Gaining currency: confession, comedy, and the economics of racial ambiguity in Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime","authors":"Kenton Butcher","doi":"10.1080/17533171.2021.1992095","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2021.1992095","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This essay analyzes Trevor Noah’s memoir, Born a Crime, and the narrator’s movement between racialized spaces, times, and identities in postapartheid South Africa. In spite of Noah’s self-identification as Black, social interactions interpellate him as white or Coloured, which frequently leads to conflict. As a means of survival, he mobilizes cultural knowledge – particularly language – to diffuse tension, influence interpretations of his body, and access socioeconomic advantages or escape disadvantages that accumulate in racialized spaces. I argue that the confessional form is an ideal genre to represent racial ambiguity because the genre itself, like the ambiguous narrator, operates upon a complex economy of revelation and concealment. The essay concludes by analyzing Noah’s comedy career and movement to the United States in order to explore transnational movements of the racially ambiguous body and the potential and pitfalls of representing racial ambiguity in twenty-first-century cultural production.","PeriodicalId":43901,"journal":{"name":"Safundi-The Journal of South African and American Studies","volume":"131 1","pages":"225 - 244"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79618292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：