Theorizing Afrophobia Beyond Apartheid: Conflict Cultures in Neill Blomkamp's District 9

Abstract

ABSTRACT The persistent Afrophobic attacks on black African immigrants in South Africa since the 1990s alert us to a new cultural watershed. Just when the country had done away with apartheid, the black-on-black attacks reified the emergence of a new cultural crisis. This article reflects on the emergent cultural identities enabled by practices of black-black violence. It takes conflict cultures as a frame to discuss Afrophobia in the context of new identity consciousness. This is achieved through a critique of Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 (2009), a film where racial antipathies are supplanted with a nebulous culture of aversion. Theorising this scenario as a euphemism for struggles with post-apartheid cultural reorganisation, the article suggests conflict culture as a theory that can account for incomplete identity transformation among all races of the South African nation.