‘SURVIVING THE FUTURE’

Abstract

Since liberation in 1994, the meaning of ‘South African’ has undergone change. Theoretical terms need to be developed in order to talk about culture and identity in the ‘new’ South Africa. There are rich traditions on which a South African cultural studies could draw, in the context of the Anglo-American domination of the field of cultural studies. However, the complexities of undertaking any kind of cultural studies in the context of the country's history, its inherited and ongoing structures, both material and conceptual, make clear the imperative to localize any theory. A South African cultural studies vocabulary has to forge something that is informed by the past even as it seeks to transcend it. Current attempts to develop a South African cultural vocabulary, such as the African Renaissance and the metaphor of the ‘rainbow nation’, are inadequate, especially in the context of the commodification of the hopes for ‘newness’ of the ‘new’ South Africa. A South African cultural studies vocabulary has to negotiate the difference which is the primary building block of the ‘new’ South Africa and the sameness which is being projected onto the identities under construction as South Africans renegotiate their relationships with Africa, and with each other in the context of ‘nation building’. Creolization and hybridity have both been used to describe aspects of South African identities, in ways which bespeak the importance of countering colonial and apartheid insistences on policing the borders of cultures.