Theo Sonnekus
Biographic Data
| ID | 941516 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Theo Sonnekus |
| GIVEN NAMES | Theo |
| FAMILY NAME | Sonnekus |
| SIGNATURE | SONNEKUS T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stellenbosch University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5939-0048 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
“Local guys wanted”
This article explores the singular case of Alternative Books (AB), a South African publisher of homoerotic photography active in the late apartheid period. While AB's titles broadly engaged established Western aesthetic traditions of the male nude (salient in gay print cultures of the twentieth century), their erotic scenes frequently played out against national landmarks and symbols, suggesting a distinct mode of vernacular homoerotic photograph…
Alternative Books in black and white
Representations of black-white homoeroticism and sensuality between men of colour in apartheid-era male nude photography aimed at white gay men, which, in South Africa, were exclusive to selected titles published by Alternative Books (AB) (1981–1991), are remarkable yet neglected in queer African studies. In this article, I explore how sexual apartheid was respectively maintained and transgressed in the historical reception of such photographs by…
Homoerotic Photography and the White Gay Imaginary in Apartheid South Africa
In this article, I consider a selection of photographs of a man of color from a luxury book of male nudes, Images (1982), aimed at white gay men and published in South Africa by Alternative Books (AB) in the late apartheid period. Given the exclusive association of assimilable homosexuality with whiteness in the national gay press and other homoerotic commodities available in South Africa at the same historical juncture, I propose that these phot…
Gays, it is said, are moving from the swish era into the macho era”
Drawing from a content analysis of early issues of the gay newspapers, Link/Skakel and Exit, I map the force with which the masculinization of gay culture, the Butch Shift, entered the white gay imaginary in South Africa in the 1980s via transnational exchanges with comparable print and visual cultures from the Global North (especially the United States) and related processes of indigenization. Along with other relevant editorial and commercial c…
Against Ordentlikheid
This article explores the art practice of Hannalie Taute vis-à-vis the discourses of ordentlikheid (respectability) and the volksmoeder (mother of the nation). I begin by offering theoretical frameworks for these discursive structures, as well as a selective historical trajectory of their development, with major emphasis on Afrikaner femininity and Afrikaner women's domestic labour. Through a reading of selected embroidered works by Taute, I spec…
Hip Afrikaners and neo-tribalism in post-apartheid South Africa
This article situates the contemporary commodification of Afrikaner ethnic identity in the ethos of late capitalism, which attributes a central place to aesthetics in the global economy. The manner in which the commercial appeal of markers of Afrikaner ethnicity significantly vacillates across time is of concern here. It is argued that (post)modern expressions of Afrikanerness give access to the superior sensibilities central to hipsterism (which…
Spectres of Afrikanerdom in contemporary commodity culture
The centrality of nostalgia in contemporary Afrikaner culture is contingent on the gradual demotion of Afrikaner history in post-apartheid South Africa. This article, however, departs from the view that such recapitulations of the past are necessarily always intransigent. Casting Afrikaner nostalgia as manifesting dissatisfaction with the government is ultimately not representative of the diverse spectres of Afrikanerdom that haunt selected commo…
‘We’re not faggots!’
This article employs the film Skoonheid (Beauty) to explore the manner in which normative, white Afrikaner masculinity still operates to expel gayness from its self-definition. What is particularly vexing to this investigation, however, is the occurrence of behavioural homosexuality among white Afrikaner men who possess a compartmentalised identity constructed from notions of nationalism, puritanism, patriarchy and homophobia. Oliver Hermanus's S…
We want to see something different (but not too different)’
This article highlights the role of sexual orientation in the social transmutation of space, thereby illustrating how certain landscapes, generally characterised by heteronormativity, are queered by cultural phenomena such as the Pink Loerie Mardi Gras (PLMG) in Knysna. It is, however, not the intent of this article to describe the processes of producing queer space in a ‘celebratory’ tone only, but also to investigate the manner in which hierarc…
Macho men and the queer imaginary
The contemporary presence of images of \nhypermasculine aesthetics in gay visual \nculture results from gay men’s response to \nbeing expected to behave like men (masculine \nperformativity) despite being told through \nstereotypes and homophobia that they are not \nmen. By fashioning themselves after archetypal \nmasculine icons, like the cowboy, gay ‘clones’ \nrepresent a nostalgic, romantic longing for ‘a \nman’s man’ that is traditionally ass…
The queering of space
With this essay, I propose to invest South African visual culture with a broader set of subjects, areas and approaches of study. It is especially with regard to what I feel the discipline and its discourses are lacking, that I chose to deal with this topic: Yes, South Africa's turbulent past is intrinsic to any study on local soil, but for the most part the focus has been on marginalised ethnic or racial minorities; while sexual orientation as ba…
We want to see something different (but not too different)’
This article highlights the role of sexual orientation in the social transmutation of space, thereby illustrating how certain landscapes, generally characterised by heteronormativity, are queered by cultural phenomena such as the Pink Loerie Mardi Gras (PLMG) in Knysna. It is, however, not the intent of this article to describe the processes of producing queer space in a ‘celebratory’ tone only, but also to investigate the manner in which hierarc…
Homoerotic Photography and the White Gay Imaginary in Apartheid South Africa
In this article, I consider a selection of photographs of a man of color from a luxury book of male nudes, Images (1982), aimed at white gay men and published in South Africa by Alternative Books (AB) in the late apartheid period. Given the exclusive association of assimilable homosexuality with whiteness in the national gay press and other homoerotic commodities available in South Africa at the same historical juncture, I propose that these phot…
Hip Afrikaners and neo-tribalism in post-apartheid South Africa
This article situates the contemporary commodification of Afrikaner ethnic identity in the ethos of late capitalism, which attributes a central place to aesthetics in the global economy. The manner in which the commercial appeal of markers of Afrikaner ethnicity significantly vacillates across time is of concern here. It is argued that (post)modern expressions of Afrikanerness give access to the superior sensibilities central to hipsterism (which…
Against Ordentlikheid
This article explores the art practice of Hannalie Taute vis-à-vis the discourses of ordentlikheid (respectability) and the volksmoeder (mother of the nation). I begin by offering theoretical frameworks for these discursive structures, as well as a selective historical trajectory of their development, with major emphasis on Afrikaner femininity and Afrikaner women's domestic labour. Through a reading of selected embroidered works by Taute, I spec…
Spectres of Afrikanerdom in contemporary commodity culture
The centrality of nostalgia in contemporary Afrikaner culture is contingent on the gradual demotion of Afrikaner history in post-apartheid South Africa. This article, however, departs from the view that such recapitulations of the past are necessarily always intransigent. Casting Afrikaner nostalgia as manifesting dissatisfaction with the government is ultimately not representative of the diverse spectres of Afrikanerdom that haunt selected commo…
The queering of space
With this essay, I propose to invest South African visual culture with a broader set of subjects, areas and approaches of study. It is especially with regard to what I feel the discipline and its discourses are lacking, that I chose to deal with this topic: Yes, South Africa's turbulent past is intrinsic to any study on local soil, but for the most part the focus has been on marginalised ethnic or racial minorities; while sexual orientation as ba…
The queering of space
With this essay, I propose to invest South African visual culture with a broader set of subjects, areas and approaches of study. It is especially with regard to what I feel the discipline and its discourses are lacking, that I chose to deal with this topic: Yes, South Africa's turbulent past is intrinsic to any study on local soil, but for the most part the focus has been on marginalised ethnic or racial minorities; while sexual orientation as ba…
Macho men and the queer imaginary
The contemporary presence of images of \nhypermasculine aesthetics in gay visual \nculture results from gay men’s response to \nbeing expected to behave like men (masculine \nperformativity) despite being told through \nstereotypes and homophobia that they are not \nmen. By fashioning themselves after archetypal \nmasculine icons, like the cowboy, gay ‘clones’ \nrepresent a nostalgic, romantic longing for ‘a \nman’s man’ that is traditionally ass…
We want to see something different (but not too different)’
This article highlights the role of sexual orientation in the social transmutation of space, thereby illustrating how certain landscapes, generally characterised by heteronormativity, are queered by cultural phenomena such as the Pink Loerie Mardi Gras (PLMG) in Knysna. It is, however, not the intent of this article to describe the processes of producing queer space in a ‘celebratory’ tone only, but also to investigate the manner in which hierarc…
‘We’re not faggots!’
This article employs the film Skoonheid (Beauty) to explore the manner in which normative, white Afrikaner masculinity still operates to expel gayness from its self-definition. What is particularly vexing to this investigation, however, is the occurrence of behavioural homosexuality among white Afrikaner men who possess a compartmentalised identity constructed from notions of nationalism, puritanism, patriarchy and homophobia. Oliver Hermanus's S…
Spectres of Afrikanerdom in contemporary commodity culture
The centrality of nostalgia in contemporary Afrikaner culture is contingent on the gradual demotion of Afrikaner history in post-apartheid South Africa. This article, however, departs from the view that such recapitulations of the past are necessarily always intransigent. Casting Afrikaner nostalgia as manifesting dissatisfaction with the government is ultimately not representative of the diverse spectres of Afrikanerdom that haunt selected commo…
Hip Afrikaners and neo-tribalism in post-apartheid South Africa
This article situates the contemporary commodification of Afrikaner ethnic identity in the ethos of late capitalism, which attributes a central place to aesthetics in the global economy. The manner in which the commercial appeal of markers of Afrikaner ethnicity significantly vacillates across time is of concern here. It is argued that (post)modern expressions of Afrikanerness give access to the superior sensibilities central to hipsterism (which…
Against Ordentlikheid
This article explores the art practice of Hannalie Taute vis-à-vis the discourses of ordentlikheid (respectability) and the volksmoeder (mother of the nation). I begin by offering theoretical frameworks for these discursive structures, as well as a selective historical trajectory of their development, with major emphasis on Afrikaner femininity and Afrikaner women's domestic labour. Through a reading of selected embroidered works by Taute, I spec…
Gays, it is said, are moving from the swish era into the macho era”
Drawing from a content analysis of early issues of the gay newspapers, Link/Skakel and Exit, I map the force with which the masculinization of gay culture, the Butch Shift, entered the white gay imaginary in South Africa in the 1980s via transnational exchanges with comparable print and visual cultures from the Global North (especially the United States) and related processes of indigenization. Along with other relevant editorial and commercial c…
“Local guys wanted”
This article explores the singular case of Alternative Books (AB), a South African publisher of homoerotic photography active in the late apartheid period. While AB's titles broadly engaged established Western aesthetic traditions of the male nude (salient in gay print cultures of the twentieth century), their erotic scenes frequently played out against national landmarks and symbols, suggesting a distinct mode of vernacular homoerotic photograph…
Alternative Books in black and white
Representations of black-white homoeroticism and sensuality between men of colour in apartheid-era male nude photography aimed at white gay men, which, in South Africa, were exclusive to selected titles published by Alternative Books (AB) (1981–1991), are remarkable yet neglected in queer African studies. In this article, I explore how sexual apartheid was respectively maintained and transgressed in the historical reception of such photographs by…
Homoerotic Photography and the White Gay Imaginary in Apartheid South Africa
In this article, I consider a selection of photographs of a man of color from a luxury book of male nudes, Images (1982), aimed at white gay men and published in South Africa by Alternative Books (AB) in the late apartheid period. Given the exclusive association of assimilable homosexuality with whiteness in the national gay press and other homoerotic commodities available in South Africa at the same historical juncture, I propose that these phot…
Gender Studies (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Art (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · South African History and Culture (6 works) · History (5 works) · African history and culture studies (4 works)