Animal likenesses

Dogs and the boundary of the human in South Africa

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2173129
AutoresGabeba Baderoon (0000-0001-5470-2364, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and African Studies, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA)
Año2017
Volumen29
Número3
Páginas345-361
Fecha de publicación2017-09-02
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of African Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1369-6815 • E-ISSN: 1469-9346
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13696815.2016.1255599
OpenAlexW2551978159
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas11
Referencias citadas9

The dog is a charged and powerful symbol in South Africa. Racialized canine invective played a formative role in colonial efforts to dispossess Africans of land. However, the symbolic meanings of dogs in South African culture range far beyond insult. Recent portrayals of canines have turned suggestively, if equivocally, from denigration toward signalling post-apartheid racial authenticity. To reflect on this shift, I draw on academic and popular writing about dog–human relations in South Africa, among them political discourse, popular media, tweets and the use of 'animal likenesses' in the essay 'The Year of the Dog' by Njabulo Ndebele, the novel Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee, and a series of photographs of Africanis dogs by the artist Daniel Naudé. Through this examination, I consider the ambivalent emblem of the dog beyond the framework of either abuse or authenticity, to consider it as a barometer of critical shifts in notions of race in South African culture

Aesthetics · Ambivalence · Art · Colonialism · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Anthropology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Psychology · Gender Studies · History · Law