Description
Title“You can't go to war without song"
Date Created2013
Other Date2013-10 (degree)
Extentxiv, 274 p. : ill.
DescriptionThis dissertation examines the role of performance in the constitution of activist community from the vantage point of the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF), one of many social movements that emerged in the wake of South Africa’s democratic transition. The study begins with the premise that performance is integral to activism, constituting the very groundwork through which queries of justice occur. It updates historical scholarship on the complicated roles of anti-apartheid performances in South Africa, providing insight into shifting responses to challenges arising in the wake of democratic transition and the adoption of neoliberal economic policies. APF members actively adapted anti-apartheid songs and created new expressive forms to inform and comment on their struggles for access to water, electricity, housing, education and health facilities, the costs of which have been prohibitive due to their privatization. Based on 16 months of fieldwork involving participant-observation, interviews, and archival research, I investigated adaptations of anti-apartheid performances to changing social dynamics including changes in activists’ relationship with the state, articulation of gender issues, emerging class-consciousness, and intergenerational linkages. The project considers performance in its multiple dimensions, ranging from routine enactments that secure, sustain, or weaken political outcomes to more practiced creative expression. I show how routine negotiations and artistic displays shaped APF’s collective identity. Furthermore, through an integrative bodily approach to the study of political performances, I consider sensory experiences and their mediation, revealing how these experiences influenced the mobilization activities that activists pursued. Particularly in moments of creative expression, sensory experiences generated positive associations that made collective political struggle desirable. In contrast, however, sensory experience also yielded aversions: combativeness generated stress, eroded solidarity, and alienated many APF members. With consideration of these varied effects, the dissertation provides an expansive analysis of mobilization, emphasizing the role of performance in the conduct of politics.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
NoteIncludes vita
Noteby Omotayo Tolulope Jolaosho
Genretheses, ETD doctoral
Languageeng
CollectionGraduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
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