"No Longer European, Not Yet African": Die Antwoord, White Liminality, and Race Bending in Contemporary South Africa

• In Event: 29.090 - Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: 29.090-27 - National and International Perspectives: Race, Ethnicity, and Class

Abstract

Just over two decades after South Africa’s remarkable post-1990 transition towards a racially inclusive model of governance, racial fault lines remain strongly entrenched. Additionally, large chasms among intra-racial classes have begun to emerge. This study attempts to engage with how a particular art form is being deployed relative to the unstable experience of contemporary South African whiteness. An aesthetic reaction to the insular Calvinist-colonial ideology of white European as ‘Light of Africa’, the cultural assemblage of Zef Rap Rave attempts to go beyond a traditional position of racial belonging towards trans-racial becoming amidst the uncertainties surrounding what it means to be white and ‘no longer European, not yet African’. Throughout, certain problematic features of this art form are also highlighted.

Author

• Paul Badenhorst, The Pennsylvania State University