Performing place, mobility and identity in South Africa

Performing place, mobility, and identity in South Africa

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8360741
AutoresShari Daya (0000-0002-4030-045X, University of Cape Town, autor de correspondencia)
Año2011
Volumen43
Número4
Páginas488-494
Fecha de publicación2011-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaArea (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0004-0894 • E-ISSN: 1475-4762
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1475-4762.2011.01031.x
OpenAlexW1665581719
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas8
Referencias citadas17

Cultural geography, as a label for a sub-discipline or a mode of enquiry, has little purchase in South Africa. Studies of the cultural production of place are, however, undertaken in multiple fields, usefully if loosely grouped under the banner of ‘cultural studies’. I argue that geographers have much of value to contribute to this field, particularly through engaging in debates that currently enliven cultural geography elsewhere. In particular, the geographical work inspired by performance studies can help balance the dominance of discursive frameworks in South African cultural studies of place. Using Nigel Thrift's non-representational theory as a springboard, I suggest that a materialist perspective on cultural production may productively re-orient the dominant ontology and epistemology of both geographical and cultural research into South African place-making, but that this need not rely on an opposition between representational and non-representational approaches. I argue that this dualism can be displaced by the concept of ‘embodied stories’, which allows the social, narrative, referential and symbolic functions of performance to be knitted together with its irreducible materiality. Through a reading of three recent performing arts events in Cape Town, I explore the value of this framework for knowledge production in cultural geography

Aesthetics · Cultural geography · Cultural turn · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Human geography · Materialism · Materiality (auditing) · Narrative · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Spatial and Cultural Studies · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts