Squirming White Bodies

This article explores some of the ways in which “whiteness” as a set of discourses is being revised in the post-apartheid cultural imagination. Through a reading of a comic strip by Anton Kannemeyer and of Ivan Vladislavić's novel The Restless Supermarket (2001), the article considers specifically the manner in which performances of whiteness are represented as responding to the pressures felt at the site of the post-apartheid interracial encounter. The feverishness with which discourses of white masculinity are either disavowed or aggressively reinforced (in the case of Kannemeyer and Vladislavić's texts respectively), indicate that postapartheid revisions of (white) identity work to a variety of ends and continue to play out around uncertainties about the meanings of race. The article considers some of the strategies of translation used in moments of interracial contact, and argues that potentially ethical and responsible performances of whiteness can only take shape if the singularity of the racially and culturally coded “other” is brought to bear on the epistemological certainties of white self-imagining

Aesthetics · Art · Close reading · Comics · Linguistics · Literature · Masculinity · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Gender Studies · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychology · South African History and Culture

• South Africa

  Open Access•Crystal Warren•The Journal of Commonwealth…•2009

  Incluir item

• White supremacy

  George M Fredrickson•White supremacy•1982

  Incluir item

• Outside in the Teaching Machine

  Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak•Outside in the Teaching Machine•2015

  Incluir item

• Whiteness just isn't what it used to be

  Melissa E Steyn•Whiteness just isn't what it used…•2001

  Incluir item

• Postcolonial Translation

  Susan Bassnett, Harish Trivedi•Postcolonial Translation•2012

  Incluir item

• Postcolonial Identities in Africa

  Richard Werbner, Terence O Ranger•Postcolonial Identities in Africa•1997

  Incluir item

• The Colonizer's Model of the World

  James M Blaut•The Colonizer's Model of the World•1993

  Incluir item

• Postcolonial Whiteness

  Alfred J López, Alfred Lopez•Postcolonial Whiteness•2005

  Incluir item

• White Women, Race Matters

  Ruth Frankenburg, Ruth Frankenberg•White Women, Race Matters•1993

  Incluir item

• From Afrikaner to African

  Helene Strau, Helene Strauss•African Identities•2006

  Incluir item

• City forms and writing the 'now' in South Africa

  Sarah Nuttall•Journal of Southern African Studies•2004

  Incluir item

• Bitterkomix

  Rita Barnard•South Atlantic Quarterly•2004

  Incluir item

• Five Afrikaner Texts and the Rehabilitation of Whiteness

  Zoë Wicomb•Social Identities•1998

  Incluir item

• Subjectivities of Whiteness

  Sarah Nuttall•African Studies Review•2001

  Incluir item

• Routes

  Open Access•R Handler•American Ethnologist•1998

  Incluir item