The mark of the mask: queer neo-ethnographies and double consciousness in post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper traces how two queer South African visual activists, Zanele Muholi and Kelebogile Ntladi, explore representations of gender identity and queer existence in their recent photographic work. Through the lens of “queer neo-ethnography,” it argues that their images oppose established codes and conventions of traditional portraiture and social documentary photography to explore the Du Boisian “double consciousness” of the queer participants who feature in their images and the complex socio-spatial and political contexts in which the images are taken. Muholi and Ntladi have turned the camera on themselves and their communities to engage with questions of black queer subjectivity in post-apartheid South Africa and, in so doing, have highlighted the disjuncture between South Africa’s liberal constitution and the homophobia, violence, and oppression which affects the queer community’s daily lived reality. Muholi’s work, in particular, underscores both the possibilities and the limitations of photography in its ability to represent black queer subjectivity.