Sarah Nuttall, Cheryl-Ann Michael, eds.. Senses of Culture: South African Culture Studies. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. xiii + 547 pp. $19.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-19-571839-3.

Reviewed by Sean Jacobs

Published on H-SAfrica (September, 2002)

This book is a substantively massive and theo‐ understanding cultural practice" and "forms of retically ambitious undertaking. In twenty-fve es‐ pleasure that destabilize cultural orthodoxies" (p. says (over 500 pages), ranging from interviews, 18). Given the interdisciplinary nature of "cultural longer rhetorical articles, a number of individual studies", it is not surprising that a wide array of case studies, and a fctional short story about academic disciplines, such as history, literary crit‐ Cape Town, the editors have attempted to outline icism, anthropology and sociology, are put into a terrain of cultural studies that has been neglect‐ practice and fused. ed in South African academia. For example, Abdoumaliq Simone in his chap‐ The collection encompasses music (kwaito, ter "Going South: African Immigrants in Johannes‐ hip hop, the composer Joseph Shabalala of Lady‐ burg", which ofers probably one of the frst seri‐ smith Black Mambazo), performance art (from ous studies of its kind on this topic, probes new the work of Venda artist Samson Mudzunga to waves of African immigration after 1990 that has grafti artists in Cape Town), flm ("road movies" settled around Johannesburg and their impact on about Johannesburg), television (soap operas and the changing the South African economic and cul‐ games shows), radio (Zulu dramas), the politics of tural landscape. the post-1994 city (local government in Soweto; Denis-Constant Martin who has written ex‐ immigrants in Johannesburg), and other disparate tensively on the "Coon Carnival" in Cape Town, topics such as beauty contests, football, the Inter‐ continues his work on New Year festivals in that net, and hair. city as contested spaces that refect both adapta‐ All these chapters ft well into the editors' tion and resistance to apartheid. As Cape Town's agenda (and illuminate the title, although they are tourism body prepares to market the Carnival as a not equally well argued) which indicates an aim rival to Rio, such politics will become even more to "explore not only the preeminence of the vis‐ signifcant. ual, but to turn to other senses as new spaces for H-Net Reviews

Oren Kaplan's chapter on the performances For Nuttall and Michael, this binary opposi‐ of Venda artist Samson Mudzunga follows a simi‐ tion has also permeated and corrupted the acade‐ lar vein. Since 1996, Mudzunga, known more for my in South Africa. They write: his woodcarvings in the South African art world, "Cultural theorizing with its emphasis on sep‐ invited Johannesburg-based fne-art institutions aration and segregation has been based until re‐ to witness a series of performance-based works cently on the following tendencies: the over-deter‐ including a "funeral" with Venda rites, a "mira‐ mination of the political, the infation of resis‐ cle", and a "traditional Venda wedding ceremony". tance, and the fxation on race, or more particu‐ Most commentators at the time, particularly in larly on racial supremacy and racial victimhood the mainstream art world, interpreted Mudzun‐ as a determinant of identity. In its adoption of ga's actions as emphasizing cultural diference these paradigms, South Africa has projected itself and the separation of the Venda people from the as diferent, as special and as unique ... as dislo‐ Johannesburg metropole. Kaplan, however, sug‐ cated from the African continent, as not African" gests that Mudzunga was deliberate. By setting up (pp. 1-2). these "traditional" events, Mudzunga "engaged his They suggest that "new forms of imagining marginality--resisting and perpetuating it" (p. 86), need to emerge and indeed are emerging" (p. 1). while using the art world as sources of infuence In pursuit of such a rereading of culture, the edi‐ to access sources of economic and political power. tors suggest the concept of "creolization" (pp. The same tensions run through a number of 6-10). They defne creolization as follows: other chapters. While the content achieves new "Creolization has usually been understood as breadths, the theoretical aspirations fall short of the process whereby individuals of diferent cul‐ the editors' ambitions. The main points of Nuttall tures, languages, and religions are thrown togeth‐ and Michael's argument are as follows. In the in‐ er and invent a new language, Creole, a new cul‐ troduction, they take issue with contemporary ture, and a new social organization" (p. 6). Nuttall analyses that assume that South Africa before and Michael also use the "senses" to develop their 1994 (the date of the frst democratic elections) notion of "creolization". "The very notion of cre‐ was bound to a narrative of political liberation olization that we have invoked here relies on a and that new confgurations were only allowed to conception of intimacy and connectedness" (p. emerge in the mid-1990s. While this focus on "de‐ 22). By referring to intimate space and senses, the compression" of the post-apartheid era is impor‐ editors attempt to show how power relations tant, Nuttall and Michael insist that such complex would become sensually experienced. confgurations--at least at the level of identity-- were always there: For them, creolization may take on diferent infections. It may for instance take the form of a "Apartheid tried to mask them through the dynamic and self-conscious process, or it may re‐ ideology of separation; the liberation struggle, fer to a more porous process occurring in soci‐ strikingly marked by a non-racial ethos, nonethe‐ eties and cultures. They claim that creolization so less emphasized that very segregation as a means conceived is distinct from "hybridity"; they argue of generating support. The new nation has tried to that "hybridity", as in Homi Bhabha's notion of a mask these complex confgurations by fore‐ third space, repeats the binary oppositions of the grounding an over-simplifed discourse of 'rain‐ recent cultural theorizing in South Africa, while bow' nationalism" (p. 1). they borrow Glissant's notion of creolization to of‐ fer a more varied sense of understanding identity and culture.

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For South Africa specifcally, they see Robert Nuttall and Michael bring in creolization as a Shell's work on the history of Cape Slavery as rep‐ means of putting race and gender back into the resentative of a South African theory of creoliza‐ conservation. At frst sight, it appears a novel con‐ tion. In contrast to the few (but infuential) studies tribution, but it becomes clear that creolization is that have appeared on slavery and the social not sufcient as a historically or theoretically co‐ world of the seventeenth-, eighteenth-and nine‐ gent concept to help scholars out of this theoreti‐ teenth-century Cape colony and "begun at the cal impasse. In fact, Nuttall and Michael exagger‐ frontier and stayed there," Shell shows that settler ate the power of creolization. For one, they over- and slave created a Creole culture of music, lan‐ generalize from the history of the Cape (a prob‐ guage and cuisine within the setting of the home. lem with most recent studies of cultural studies [1] texts from South Africa), and hastily abandon Nuttall and Michael also see parallels to their class and race, domination and resistance, in a use of creolization in the work of Carolyn Hamil‐ way that does not gel with the realities of post- ton on the nineteenth century Zulu kingdom (as a apartheid South Africa. construction of a "tribe"); David Bunn on poison It is also true that many of the hierarchies of in eighteenth and nineteenth century South culture are not so strong as in the past. At the Africa, who "gestures towards the beginnings of same time, many diferent movements take place an ambivalently shared knowledge of medicines over the "boundaries" or at the "margins" of cul‐ and herbs between colonizer and colonized" (p. ture (here one can mention music forms--hip hop, 8); and more recently Charles van Onselen's study house, kwaito--and broadcast media like televi‐ of (shared) sharecropper identities in the early sion and radio, for example). But in their eager‐ twentieth century. They also fnd use (although ness to privilege this creolization, Nuttall and they suggest it is less certain) of creolization in the Michael underplay the determining impact of ma‐ works of Lauren Smith, Michael Chapman and terial factors and power relations. South African Rob Nixon.[2] All these theoretical connections society still largely refects economic inequalities are referred to in passing, though, and without that coincide with the racial divides of the past, much explanation. despite the emergence of the cultural mixing of It is difcult to disagree with the general kwaito with house (the latter a largely "white" thrust of their initial critique (which are also tak‐ music form in South Africa until recently) or en up by two other contributors, Robert Thornton coloured rappers' tales of ghetto nihilism and and John Noyes in separate chapters): taking issue black power politics going down well with with South Africa as "closed space" is especially Afrikaner youths in mostly white clubs of the ma‐ timely. At the same time, I take issue with their in‐ jor cities, for example. vestment in "creolization" as a concept and as a They appear to underplay the fact that such way out of the post-1994 cultural theoretical im‐ imaginings always go along with power relations, passe. It is true, as Robert Thornton argues in the which in turn sustain certain identities with a po‐ same volume, that cultural studies in South Africa litical agenda and that even the new imaginings is strongly infuenced by British models empha‐ will themselves be subject to power relations. This sizing Marxist class analysis. As a result, complex is particularly dangerous in their favoring of an cultural understandings of race and gender in interpretation of Cape slavery as a site of creoliza‐ particular have sufered at the expense of more tion while ignoring the signifcance of the power materialist explanations (p. 36). relationships underlying such exchange. Nuttall and Michael fall into the trap of relying on theo‐

3 H-Net Reviews retical insights gained from work elsewhere, such sion (Cape Town and Cambridge: David Philip and as the wholesale import of Glissant's insights, Harvard University Press, 1998); D. Bunn, "The without showing more sensitivity for the history Brown Serpent of the Rocks: Bushman Arrow Tox‐ and specifc context of South Africa. ins in the Dutch and British Imaginations, This tendency is ironically critiqued within 1735-1850", in Transgressing Boundaries: New Di‐ the volume itself. Citing Said, John Noyes writes rections in the Study of Culture, ed. B. Cooper and that when theories move from one historical or A. Steyn (Cape Town: University of Cape Town geographical context to another, certain ideas lose Press, 1996); C. Van Onselen, The Seed is Mine: The their revolutionary edge while others become ac‐ Life of Kas Maine, a South African Sharecropper, tivated in their full revolutionary potential. Noyes 1894-1985 (Cape Town: David Philip, 1996); L. also cites fction writer Zoe Wicomb on Homi Smith, "Christ as Creole: Hybridity and the Revi‐ Bhabha's theory of hybridity--which can be "con‐ sion of Colonial Imagery in the Works of Bessie ceived as a subtle and efective refutation of Head", English in Africa, 26:1 (1999); M.Chapman, Manichaean tendencies in colonial discourse Southern African Literatures (London and New studies in the 1980s"--sounds more like "an apolo‐ York: Longman, 1996); R. Nixon, Homelands, gy for apartheid population management poli‐ Harlem and Hollywood: South African Culture cies" when it is used in the South African context and the World Beyond (London and New York: (p. 52). Routledge, 1994). What Wicomb takes as Bhabha's glorifcation [3]. The original: Z. Wicomb, "Shame and of hybridity is, in her opinion, "ofensive in a Identity: The Case of the Coloured in South country that for many years codifed 'hybridity' in Africa", in Writing South Africa: Literature, the exploitable liability of 'coloured' identity" (p. Apartheid and Democracy 1970-1995, ed. D. At‐ 52). Bhaba's comments on hybridity as a post-colo‐ tridge and R. Jolly (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer‐ nial potential loses its meaning in a country that sity Press, 1998). until recently, legislated quite literally, a third [4]. In his recent review essay of trends in space for a coloured subjectivity defned accord‐ African Studies in the United States and the Unit‐ ing to a highly unstable and convoluted notion of ed Kingdom (the two strongest centres of African racial mixing.[3] Studies outside the continent), Colin Bundy (the For me a theory of "creolization" does not new director and principal of SOAS, University of bring us to "new imaginings". Instead, it refects London) writes, that the "academic anxieties of the tendency to reinforce dependency within Africanists" are, among others, related to the academia; that is the wholesale importation of "strictures of post-structuralism, post-modernism theoretical ideas from outside a particular context and post-colonialism". He continues, "This is not (originating largely in the West) without engaging the place to air my strong reservations as to the with that theory more creatively and critically applicability of some of some of the scholarship to and with the specifcity of history.[4] African realities. But there is something unsettling about the prevailing emphasis on discourse and Notes agency when it is not difcult to see that the prin‐ [1]. R. Shell, Children of Bondage: A Social cipal determinants of human action [in Africa] History of Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, are material and structural" (Bundy, "Continuing 1652-1838 (Witwatersrand University Press, 1994). A Conversation: Prospects for African Studies in [2]. C. Hamilton, Terrifc Majesty: The Powers the 21st Century,", African Afairs, 101 (2002), p. of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Inven‐ 64).

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Citation: Sean Jacobs. Review of Nuttall, Sarah; Michael, Cheryl-Ann, eds. Senses of Culture: South African Culture Studies. H-SAfrica, H-Net Reviews. September, 2002.

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