Embracing racial reasoning: the DASO poster controversy and ‘Race’politics in contemporary South Africa

Vincent, Louise; Howell, Simon

Title: Embracing racial reasoning: the DASO poster controversy and ‘Race’politics in contemporary South Africa
Creator: Vincent, Louise
Creator: Howell, Simon
Date Issued: 2014
Date: 2014
Type: text
Type: article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141933
Identifier: vital:38017
Identifier: DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2014.877651
Description: We examine the response to a poster published by South Africa's official opposition's youth wing, the Democratic Alliance's Student Organisation (DASO) as part of a political campaign in 2012. From commentary that the poster's publication generated, we excavate some of the key discursive strategies used by commentators to negotiate the gulf between the constitutional value of non-racialism and the lived contemporary reality of race in South Africa. Many commentators situated themselves either as ‘colour-blind’, or reformulated ‘race’ as ‘class’ or ‘culture’. In making visible some of these strategies, and the attendant (re-)racialised narratives upon which they rely, we highlight the paradoxes that inhere in the idea of ‘non-racialism’ – a notion that implies that race must simultaneously be thought and ‘un-thought’. Racial categories contrived by apartheid have been somewhat rearranged and rearticulated, but nevertheless continue to operate today as organising principles.
Format: 16 pages
Format: pdf
Language: English
Relation: Journal of Southern African Studies
Relation: Vincent, L. and Howell, S., 2014. Embracing racial reasoning: The DASO poster controversy and ‘Race’politics in contemporary South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies, 40(1), pp.75-90.
Relation: Journal of Southern African Studies volume 40 number 1 75 90 March 2014
Rights: Publisher
Rights: Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Taylor and Francis Online Terms and Conditions statement (https://www.tandfonline.com/terms-and-conditions)

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RU Department of Political and International Studies

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