Representational praxis of coloured identity in South Africa reified by discursive formations located across three different online spaces
| dc.contributor.advisor | Strauss, H. J. | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Brokensha, S. | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Kurzwelly, J. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Fray, Tammy | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2022-01-27T11:03:23Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2022-01-27T11:03:23Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2021-02 | |
| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation critically analyses contemporary representations of South African coloured self-styling that are located online. Social networking sites and online magazine-like media, are used by contemporary self-defined coloured South Africans to curate and publish content that postulates ideas about individual and collective performances of coloured identity. This involves publishing content from popular accounts located on social media applications as well as domains that enable editorial publication of small online magazines. In general, this dissertation aims to gauge the social, cultural and political significance of contemporary digitally curated performances of coloured identity. This study analyses present constructions of coloured identity made by those who claim the identity in different online contexts. The porous boundaries between the offline and online context and the mass production of visual technologies, means that the visual is central to popular culture (Rose, 2016: 35) and that meaning is produced and communicated through carefully constructed images. These visual constructions shape how the social world is understood and engaged. Social networking sites generate and circulate knowledge and ideas visually and technological attributes like hashtags and captions, influence the interpretation of the image. Understanding discursive formations (Rose, 2016: 212) located online is integral to establishing how knowledge and power ultimately circulate in the digital world and how this may impact representations of South African coloured identity online. To this end, the study assesses five multimodal texts sourced from two social media accounts and one online womxn’s magazine, respectively. The accounts, @being_ coloured and VannieKaap, are located on social media applications, Instagram and Facebook and the online magazine, Swirl Magazine ZA, is hosted on the domain MadMagz. Concerning the theoretical framework of this project, a number of theories—ranging from critical race theory, constructivist theories and the tenets discourse analysis as part of discursive psychology facilitate my interpretations of the texts I have selected to analyse. I selected texts found on three different online contexts as well as three digital forms, to compare and to account for the diverse expressions of coloured identity that exist and the possibilities for these expressions that different online contexts permit. The three respective online contexts analysed shape the form and content of the multimodal messages shared from the accounts analysed and this is because the design, architecture, aesthetics and platform vernaculars of different online contexts play a role in the production, circulation and consumption of the multimodal messages. In looking at different online contexts, the study intends to cast a wide net across the digital space to reveal what those who self-define as coloured might be navigating politically, socially and culturally. In order to select texts to analyse, criteria were developed in advance. The criteria include the following six imperatives: 1) Overt references to Coloured identity, either in the individual or collective sense. 2) Explicit references to assumed generally accepted styles of Coloured identity performance (hair, clothes, language, gender, accent, values, behaviours). 3) Explicit claims, presented as truth about the socio-political and economic position Coloured people occupy in contemporary South Africa. 4) Rigid policing that employs persuasion techniques (Rose, 2016: 210) to advocate for an ‘essence’ (1988: 521) that defines Coloured identity. 5) Explicit aims stated, using hashtags and text, behind certain representations of Coloured identity. These imperatives determined which texts were ultimately selected for analysis. In addition to the above criteria, the ironclad rule with respect to maintaining research ethicality, restricted the texts chosen to only those published by public facing social media account holders and online magazine editors. According to Jang and Cullingham (2012), content posted/published in the public domain online, may be used in the course of desktop study research projects1. To this end, I successfully received ethical clearance from the University of the Free State’s Ethics Committee. The research is valuable as it assesses the multimodal formations of contemporary Coloured identity in the digital realm—a space that is designed for constructed identity performance. This research builds on the findings of scholars such as Adhikari (2009: 6), who has described the history of representations of self-defined coloured identity, as characterised by contradictions and influenced by the precarity of coloured marginality and the rigidity of an apartheid state built on racial capitalism. Considering the salience of digital realm in our contemporary context, this research observes and assesses the intersections between race, identity and the internet in order to arrive at conclusions regarding contemporary coloured representation. | en_ZA |
| dc.description.sponsorship | University of the Free State Postgraduate School | en_ZA |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11660/11373 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_ZA |
| dc.publisher | University of the Free State | en_ZA |
| dc.rights.holder | University of the Free State | en_ZA |
| dc.subject | Dissertation (M.A. (English))--University of the Free State, 2021 | en_ZA |
| dc.subject | South African -- Coloureds people -- Fashion design | en_ZA |
| dc.subject | South African -- Coloureds people -- Online fashion design | en_ZA |
| dc.subject | South African coloured self-styling | en_ZA |
| dc.title | Representational praxis of coloured identity in South Africa reified by discursive formations located across three different online spaces | en_ZA |
| dc.type | Dissertation | en_ZA |