Performing place, mobility and identity in South Africa

Abstract

Cultural geography, as a label for a sub-discipline or a mode of enquiry, has little purchase in South Africa. Studies of the cultural production of place are, however, undertaken in multiple fields, usefully if loosely grouped under the banner of ‘cultural studies’. I argue that geographers have much of value to contribute to this field, particularly through engaging in debates that currently enliven cultural geography elsewhere. In particular, the geographical work inspired by performance studies can help balance the dominance of discursive frameworks in South African cultural studies of place. Using Nigel Thrift's non-representational theory as a springboard, I suggest that a materialist perspective on cultural production may productively re-orient the dominant ontology and epistemology of both geographical and cultural research into South African place-making, but that this need not rely on an opposition between representational and non-representational approaches. I argue that this dualism can be displaced by the concept of ‘embodied stories’, which allows the social, narrative, referential and symbolic functions of performance to be knitted together with its irreducible materiality. Through a reading of three recent performing arts events in Cape Town, I explore the value of this framework for knowledge production in cultural geography.