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- Convenors:
-
Camille Martinerie
(Aix-Marseille Université)
Tayler Friar (University of Cape Town)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Streams:
- History (x) Inequality (y)
- Location:
- Neues Seminargebäude, Seminarraum 25
- Sessions:
- Thursday 1 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
This panel adopts a cross-disciplinary approach to postracial discourses on Africa to counter their elusiveness through a critical deconstruction of their histories, representations and trajectories in the public sphere: from international relations to cultural representations and education.
Long Abstract:
Since the first wave of African independences in the 1960s, a set of theories was produced to discuss the future of African nation-states and their decolonisation: ranging from postcolonial and Afrocentric to decolonial theoretical frameworks; and paradigms of conflict resolution from 'reconciliation' to 'reparation'. More recently, in the neoliberal context of global capitalism, climate change and mounting neo-nationalist movements, some nations have been increasingly described as 'postracial societies'. In Are We All Postracial Yet?, Goldberg (2015) unpacked the assumptions underlying the uses of postracial discourse following the election of Barack Obama as the first 'black' President of the United States: "[t]he very term 'postracial' places racism's harms beyond critical analysis, rendered unreachable because erased from language, and ungovernable because assigned to private rather than collective address". Thus, the 'postracial' refers here to hegemonic discourses which rearrange racial hierarchies by assuming they belong to the past. In adopting a cross-disciplinary approach, this panel seeks to counter the elusiveness of postracial discourses through a critical deconstruction of their genealogies, representations and trajectories in the public sphere: from international relations to cultural representations and education. The aim is threefold: first, to identify common expressions of postracialism across the continent and across fields; second, to historicize and situate postracial discourse as an 'in-between' - that is, a negotiation between hegemonic neoliberal rhetoric and deconstructive models of resistance; third, to interrogate the ideological context of production of postracial discourses and their impact on the making and thinking of African futures on the global scale.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 1 June, 2023, -Camille Martinerie (Aix-Marseille Université)
Paper short abstract:
Since the 'New South Africa' has often been described as “post-Apartheid” or “post-colonial”, this paper investigates the different meanings and implications of these notions in the production of “postracial discourses” drawing insights from debates in South African intellectual history.
Paper long abstract:
Following More’s (2022, 334) assertion that “ the ‘New South Africa” is often articulated as being “post-Apartheid”, “post-settler” or “post-colonial”, this paper investigates the different meanings of these terms and what they entail for the production of “postracial discourses” in Africa, using South Africa as a generic case of racial capitalism to draw insights on the limits of intellectual decolonisation on the continent. Indeed, the South African model of truth and reconciliation has been praised and spread around the world while it remained extremely contested within Pan-Africanist circles in and out of the country. Taking the South African debate on “nonracialism” as a point of departure to anchor my argument surrounding the uses and abuses of postracial rhetoric, I come back on the different intellectual traditions presiding over the definition of “African futures” within the South African context. I distinguish between postcolonial, Afrocentric and decolonial expressions of postracialism using Achille Mbembe’s intellectual trajectory from On the Postcolony (2001) and Critique of Black Reason (2013) to Brutalism (2020) as guiding thread towards understanding the limits of intellectual decolonisation and its detractors.
Kevin Rosianu (Institute of Sport Sciences of University of Lausanne)
Paper short abstract:
My paper deals with the influence of sports media on the (re)affirmation of dominant ideas about race. I analyse the mediatic discourses of a South African mixed martial arts promotion to reveal their contribution to the racialization process of black African migrant fighters in South Africa.
Paper long abstract:
The Extreme Fighting Championship (EFC) is a mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion funded in 2009, in Johannesburg. Among its many professional fighters are migrants who face economic, administrative, and social issues related to both their migrant status and their harsh working conditions at the EFC. Being interested in the influence of sports media on the (re)affirmation of dominant ideas about race, I analyse EFC’s mediatic discourses to reveal their contribution to the racialization process of black African fighters. To do this, I rely on 16 videos produced by the EFC and 61 semi-structured interviews with 35 male black African fighters. First, I show how the EFC builds a dangerous otherness narrative using (a) essentialist racial assignments and (b) the rivalries between citizens and foreigners embedded in South African society. Second, I show how the EFC builds a reassuring otherness mobilizing meritocratic and colour-blindness ideologies. Finally, I show how both these narratives reflect EFC’s discriminatory structure and thus reconfigure black African fighters’ hardships. My work aims at understanding how media reflect sport promotion oppressive dynamics, how they feed racial hierarchies and how they contribute to sports migrant’s precarity.
Klare van Heerden (University of Cape Town)
Paper short abstract:
The 1957 Witchcraft Suppression Act is still in place in South Africa today. This Act impacts different racial and geographical areas in South Africa. For some, the Act stands in the way of justice and protection, for others, it acts as a barrier to religious freedom.
Paper long abstract:
South Africans were given religious freedom with the formation of the new Constitution in 1996. The implementation of this law is a significant achievement, in theory. However, in practice, this law has shown some great difficulties for minority religions. One of these are the Wiccans, who fall under the umbrella term of Paganism. Since 2007, South African Wiccans have engaged with the law in a quest for religious freedom. Wiccans claim that the Witchcraft Suppression Act No3 of 1957 (WSA 3, 1957) violates their constitutional right to religious freedom and submitted requests to the South African Law Reform Commission (SALRC) to repeal the Act. This paper locates the Wiccan quest for religious freedom in a South African context where the Wiccan perception of witchcraft as a harmless religious practice differs fundamentally from that of the Black majority of the country, to whom witchcraft is the evil and often the fatal work of witches. The question is whether Wiccans have the constitutional right to religious freedom or if they are positioning themselves from a place of white privilege into a debate that does not affect their practice. In 2022, a Discussion paper was published by the SALRC to reach an accommodation as to whether the WSA 3, 1957 should be repealed, replaced, or continued to be implemented. It is, therefore, essential to locate the Wiccan voice in the greater context of South Africa and reveal how their request to repeal the Act would affect the rest of the country.
Esma Karadag (University of Cape Town) Zafer Çelik (Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University) Latife Reyhan Başer (Social Sciences University of Ankara)
Paper short abstract:
This study investigates how national, religious, and ethnic identities are depicted in humanities and social sciences textbooks in Sudan in the context of inclusivity, power, identity, colonialism, and post-colonialism.
Paper long abstract:
With the emergence of modern states, education and textbooks became important tools in the birth and spread of nationalism, in the construction of national identity, and in defining “us” and “other”. Textbooks are one of the most critical tools in forming social memory, especially in post-conflict societies such as Sudan. This study examines how national, religious, and ethnic identities in Sudan are represented in educational materials in the context of power, identity, colonialism, and post-colonialism. As an example of comparative textbook analysis research, this study questions how educational materials marginalise and appropriate groups and define Islam and other religions. This empirical study intends to serve as a clue for a magnifying lens on the wider social perception of ingroups and outgroups and how Sudan constructs its collective memory of other nations with which it has historical and contemporary social, political, and economic relations. This applied research aims to sensitise education and raise awareness of the elements in national education systems that reinforce stereotypes and prejudices about other ethnic communities and create an opportunity to better understand and transform the image of the other in textbooks to promote mutual understanding. In adopting a cross-disciplinary approach, 45 humanities and social sciences textbooks in Sudan at the primary and secondary levels, approved by the Ministry of Education were examined. The data were analysed using the Critical Discourse Analysis method. The study reveals that Sudanese textbooks emphasise Arab identity rather than African or Sudanese through the represented leaders and reveals bias and wrong information.
Goran Music (University of Vienna)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will shed light on Yugoslav workers' imaginaries of race and the socialist development mission in Zambia beyond the official narrative of colorless workers’ internationalism.
Paper long abstract:
The bourgeoning research on the exchanges of students, workers and experts between the “Second” and “Third” world during the Cold War usually focuses on the movement from the Global South toward Eastern Europe. An important aspect covered by these accounts is the paradox of everyday racism encountered by Africans in state socialist countries which endorsed strong anti-racist official rhetoric. When the flows of people in the opposite direction are taken into account they typically look at highly skilled personnel operating in African urban centers immersed in mostly white international expat and diplomatic circles. This paper will shed light on the newly arrived workers from Yugoslavia in the isolated construction sites and workshops in Zambia. By using the enterprise newspapers and oral history the paper will show how work and contact with the local population shaped the Yugoslavs’ imaginaries of race and the socialist development mission in Africa beyond the official narrative of colorless workers’ internationalism.
Tayler Friar (University of Cape Town)
Paper short abstract:
Taking ownership by becoming the artists themselves and harnessing the black female body image to their will signifies the black woman “asserting dominion over their own bodies” and reclaiming agency in their identity (Wallace Sanders, 2006:114).
Paper long abstract:
Taking ownership by becoming the artists themselves and harnessing the black female body image to their will signifies the black woman “asserting dominion over their own bodies” and reclaiming agency in their identity (Wallace Sanders, 2006:114). This chapter explores ways in which such traditionally diminishing labels are being reclaimed through modern expression to re-establish images of the black female body as a source of empowerment. In looking at the iconography of Sara Baartman, the article aimed not to revisit her history, but also to recognize the endurance of her body (and countless African women's enslaved bodies) to serve as vessels of ancestral memory despite a violent past. Drawing on disability theory, the chapter explores how the black female body during the time of Baartman’s was deemed disabled in its treatment which morally justified her being othered and put into the carnivalesque setting. Writers like Bakhtin help to contextualize the development of the grotesque and the carnivalesque as a backdrop for such mistreatments and amplification of the European imagination aloud. Focusing on the different ways Tracey Rose, Lady Skollie, and Wangechi Mutu interact with the body and the colonial paradigm demonstrates the sophisticated and layered nature of working with the black female body archetype.By endeavoring to unmirror from the colonial violence and stereotypes of the past, this ideological struggle to evolve past the carnivalesque black female body must continue amongst African woman artists.