Nasi iStocko! Forging contemporary feminist imaginaries of liberation

Abstract

abstract In this article, I engage with the John Vuli Gate dance challenge as an example of African women’s negotiation with agency in heteropatriarchal capitalist society. I begin to tend to concerns around the possibilities of agency, empowerment and self-determination within popular culture. I seek to show that agency is complicated but does not necessarily cease to exist in its entirety because of the oppressive context within which it exists. I draw on Patricia Clough’s (2008) theorisation of what she terms the New Body, which is the body mediated by bio-technologies and all scales of matter, including social media platforms. Posthuman debates also feature alongside the New Body because central to the posthumanist perspective is the argument that humans will always be entangled with technology. I assert that the John Vuli Gate dance challenge, its documentation into video form and viral spread constitutes a postfeminist sensibility. I observe also how the virtual circulation and engagement with the video on Twitter inspires a viral performance of a style of dance involving a sticking out of the buttocks and swaying of the hips. Here, I draw attention to the historical nature of such a dance among African women and the diaspora and argue that the John Vuli Gate dance challenge is a return to the pleasure associated with this dance rather than the colonial imposition that insists on objectifying Black women who dance this way.