Understanding popular resistance to xenophobia in South Africa: ‘people think’ and the possibility of alternative politics

Parker, Jemima

Title: Understanding popular resistance to xenophobia in South Africa: ‘people think’ and the possibility of alternative politics
Creator: Parker, Jemima
Subject: Xenophobia -- South Africa
Subject: Nationalism -- South Africa
Subject: Lazarus, Sylvain -- Political and social views
Subject: Political culture -- South Africa
Subject: Social change -- South Africa -- Political aspects
Subject: Discourse analysis -- South Africa -- Political aspects
Subject: South Africa -- Politics and government -- 1994-
Subject: Political science -- Philosophy
Subject: Political sociology -- South Africa
Date Issued: 2020
Date: 2020
Type: text
Type: Thesis
Type: Masters
Type: MA
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/115006
Identifier: vital:34069
Description: This thesis is concerned with the crisis of xenophobia in South Africa. It argues, firstly, that xenophobia itself is not primarily a reaction to poverty, inequality, or any other set of social conditions. Rather, xenophobia must be considered to be a collective political discourse which has arisen in post-apartheid South Africa from an exclusionary conception of state nationalism. Where this work may be distinguished from the majority of research on xenophobia in South Africa is in the fact that its particular focus is on instances where ‘ordinary’ South Africans have challenged and resisted xenophobic violence in their communities through collective political mobilisation. I suggest that these sites of resistance deserve careful consideration in their own right. I argue that they may demonstrate a subjective break with the oppressive politics of state nationalism through the affirmation of alternative political conceptions. Drawing on the political theory of Sylvain Lazarus, and his principal thesis that people are capable of thinking politics in ways which can subjectively think beyond the social and the extant (underscored by his political and methodological axiom, people think), this thesis argues that these sites of resistance show that people – and especially those who are considered to be marginalised from the domain of legitimate politics – can and do think politically, and it is in the thought of people that new and potentially emancipatory visions of politics may emerge.
Format: 262 pages
Format: pdf
Publisher: Rhodes University
Publisher: Faculty of Humanities, Political and International Studies
Language: English
Rights: Parker, Jemima

Hits: 4046
Visitors: 4458
Downloads: 557

Collections

RU Department of Political and International Studies

		Thumbnail	File	Description	Size	Format
View Details Download			SOURCE1	PARKER-MA-TR20-52.pdf	2 MB	Adobe Acrobat PDF	View Details Download