Beyond Occupy? Grievance Politics and the Articulation of the Nation in the other South Africa

• In Event: 084 - Student Forum Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. How the Social Shapes Behaviors

Abstract

The paper is an attempt to reflect on nationalist politics and its accompanying political imaginations in South Africa. It looks at the ‘other’ South Africa which still has to realise the gains of political modernity. As I will show in this article, modernity to the citizens of the South Africa I refer to in this article is largely a somewhat possible though yet to be realised project. Its consequences in most parts of this ‘other’ South Africa have not only been extreme poverty, social marginality or political exclusion but also the emergence and formation of new subjectivities and collective agency. In this paper, I devote much scholarly attention in theorising the modern political subject in the South Africa that have not actively participated in the project of modernity and globalisation. I will extend my conversation by looking at how citizen-subject positions are being constituted particularly in the interaction between state and non-state actors.

Author

• Tawanda Sydesky Nyawasha, University of Hong Kong