Performing political stories of the self
Subverting identities in the city of Goma, DR Congo
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2402845 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sam Kniknie (0000-0002-2094-9665, Ghent University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Publication date | 2023-06-28 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Ethnography (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1466-1381 • E-ISSN: 1741-2714 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/14661381231186003 |
| OpenAlex | W4382401691 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 34 |
Since the 'performative turn' in social sciences, ethnographers have extensively studied how performances both constitute the subject and method of social theory but rarely understood the political potential that lies in it for research participants. This article looks at how young urban activists in the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo (hereafter Congo) politically appropriated performances that were initially meant as a research tool. Using audiovisual methods, this article analyzes three musical performances that were part of collaborative ethnographic research with a political youth group in Goma's urban periphery. The members of this group used songs produced during the research process to create new identities and subvert political labels applied to them by outsiders. While this political storytelling of the self is an imperfect process, it signifies how ethnographic knowledge is not simply representational but always (co-)produced and performative
Aesthetics · Art · Democracy · Ethnography · Media studies · Narrative · Performative utterance · Political science · Political subjectivity · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Storytelling · Subject (documents · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Cultural Identity and Heritage · Gender Studies · Law · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies
Sharing Medical Adherence Responsibilities Together
Contentious Performances
Modernity and self-identity
Tales of the Field
Fieldwork Under FireContemporary Studies of Violence and Culture
On Ethnographic Allegory
Necessary Noise
Gender Trouble
Music and the politics of the past
Making use of the past
Armed mobilisation and the nexus of territory, identity, and authority
Subjectivation and performative politics—Butler thinking Althusser and Foucault
The Congo wars
Navigating Terrains of War
Recruiting a nonlocal language for performing local identity
Of “Doubtful Nationality
Performing as a moral act
Poetics, play, process, and power
Sons of Which Soil? The Language and Politics of Autochthony in Eastern D.R. Congo
Formations of Violence
My Life is Like a Movie
Expectations of Modernity on the Copperbelt
Negotiating Dangerous Fields
Violent Virtuosity
Non-representational ethnography
The Ostentatious Crowd
Les Ninja, les Cobra et les Zoulou crèvent l'écran à Brazzaville
Beyond 'identity
| Highly cited | No |
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