Part II Zef/poor white kitsch chique
- Authors: Krueger, Anton
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/225745 , vital:49255 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2012.715484"
- Description: Ninja, who fronts the freak hip-hop band Die Antwoord, might not be quite what Desmond Tutu had in mind when he described South Africans as the “Rainbow People of God,”24 a happy harmonious amalgamation of different races. In his introduction to their seminal comic track “Enter the Ninja,” Ninja presents himself, rather, as a mongrel gutter dog, both embracing and parodying a syncretic fusion of the many different cultures and races of South Africa, celebrating as well as subverting the rainbow nation discourse. As he said in an interview with News24: “South African culture is quite a fucking fruit salad … a fucking fucked rainbow nation. South Africa's totally fucked … but in a cool way.”25 The cool side of being “fucked” in this way is “Zef.” Zef denotes a particular style of vulgar humor (in the usual sense of the word “vulgar,” but also with a nod to its origin in the Latin vulgaris for “mob” or “commoners”), which has been emerging more and more in South Africa during the past decade. It involves a way of presenting a persona in a purposefully degrading way, exaggerating one's appearance and mannerisms as low class, ill bred, and boorish. I would like to consider the recent popularity of “Zef” and examine its connection specifically to popular Afrikaans folk rock culture, a lineage of white poverty, and the feeling of disgrace experienced by many white Afrikaners after the end of apartheid.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Krueger, Anton
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/225745 , vital:49255 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2012.715484"
- Description: Ninja, who fronts the freak hip-hop band Die Antwoord, might not be quite what Desmond Tutu had in mind when he described South Africans as the “Rainbow People of God,”24 a happy harmonious amalgamation of different races. In his introduction to their seminal comic track “Enter the Ninja,” Ninja presents himself, rather, as a mongrel gutter dog, both embracing and parodying a syncretic fusion of the many different cultures and races of South Africa, celebrating as well as subverting the rainbow nation discourse. As he said in an interview with News24: “South African culture is quite a fucking fruit salad … a fucking fucked rainbow nation. South Africa's totally fucked … but in a cool way.”25 The cool side of being “fucked” in this way is “Zef.” Zef denotes a particular style of vulgar humor (in the usual sense of the word “vulgar,” but also with a nod to its origin in the Latin vulgaris for “mob” or “commoners”), which has been emerging more and more in South Africa during the past decade. It involves a way of presenting a persona in a purposefully degrading way, exaggerating one's appearance and mannerisms as low class, ill bred, and boorish. I would like to consider the recent popularity of “Zef” and examine its connection specifically to popular Afrikaans folk rock culture, a lineage of white poverty, and the feeling of disgrace experienced by many white Afrikaners after the end of apartheid.
- Full Text:
The implacable grandeur of the stranger
- Authors: Krueger, Anton
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/229430 , vital:49673 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2013.799798"
- Description: South Africa is a nation of strangers, an uneasy mishmash of heterogeneous economic groupings, cultures and languages, a nation of marginalised minorities awkwardly pasted together. Numerous attempts have been made by its government to define and bolster a sense of nationalism and to create a sense of cohesion; however, a shadow side of this appeal for national identity has been the rise in xenophobic violence precipitated by the steady influx of refugees into the country. The title of this article is drawn from Albert Camus’s introduction to his disarming novella of dislocation, L’Etranger (1942), and I would like to explore some of the philosophical implications of representing strangers in different ways. Drawing on works by Zygmunt Bauman, Georg Simmel and Julia Kristeva, I will consider ambivalences towards the stranger represented in Magnet Theatre’s production (2010) of Die Vreemdeling [The Stranger], and pose a few questions about our relationship with the unknown. Attempts to familiarise the constituents of various communities with aspects of each other’s strangeness is a project which has typified much South African theatre in the past; and yet this is an approach which stands in sharp contrast to the importance granted processes of defamiliarisation first proposed so succinctly by Victor Shklovsky in 1917. Instead of attempts to harness and explain the unfamiliarity of others in order to communicate diversity, a celebration of the grandeur of the stranger may provide a more enriching alternative.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Krueger, Anton
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/229430 , vital:49673 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2013.799798"
- Description: South Africa is a nation of strangers, an uneasy mishmash of heterogeneous economic groupings, cultures and languages, a nation of marginalised minorities awkwardly pasted together. Numerous attempts have been made by its government to define and bolster a sense of nationalism and to create a sense of cohesion; however, a shadow side of this appeal for national identity has been the rise in xenophobic violence precipitated by the steady influx of refugees into the country. The title of this article is drawn from Albert Camus’s introduction to his disarming novella of dislocation, L’Etranger (1942), and I would like to explore some of the philosophical implications of representing strangers in different ways. Drawing on works by Zygmunt Bauman, Georg Simmel and Julia Kristeva, I will consider ambivalences towards the stranger represented in Magnet Theatre’s production (2010) of Die Vreemdeling [The Stranger], and pose a few questions about our relationship with the unknown. Attempts to familiarise the constituents of various communities with aspects of each other’s strangeness is a project which has typified much South African theatre in the past; and yet this is an approach which stands in sharp contrast to the importance granted processes of defamiliarisation first proposed so succinctly by Victor Shklovsky in 1917. Instead of attempts to harness and explain the unfamiliarity of others in order to communicate diversity, a celebration of the grandeur of the stranger may provide a more enriching alternative.
- Full Text:
The pump room
- Authors: Krueger, Anton
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/225764 , vital:49256 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2012.754084"
- Description: I like Allan Kolski Horwitz. He’s done great things for independent publishing in South Africa. Through his company, Botsotso, he’s probably responsible for publishing more poetry, prose and drama than any single person in the country today. The industriousness of his one-man operation has generously sponsored and nurtured thousands of pages of local literature over the course of many years. This is why it makes me so uncomfortable to say that I really don’t like this play. It gives me no pleasure to write a negative review, and especially not about books written by people I like. If I hadn’t already committed myself to writing this review, I would have avoided it. Nevertheless, I had, so I won’t.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Krueger, Anton
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/225764 , vital:49256 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2012.754084"
- Description: I like Allan Kolski Horwitz. He’s done great things for independent publishing in South Africa. Through his company, Botsotso, he’s probably responsible for publishing more poetry, prose and drama than any single person in the country today. The industriousness of his one-man operation has generously sponsored and nurtured thousands of pages of local literature over the course of many years. This is why it makes me so uncomfortable to say that I really don’t like this play. It gives me no pleasure to write a negative review, and especially not about books written by people I like. If I hadn’t already committed myself to writing this review, I would have avoided it. Nevertheless, I had, so I won’t.
- Full Text:
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