Brothers from another mother: Seeing the uncanny in US popular media depictions of South Africa

IF 1.5 2区社会学 Q1 CULTURAL STUDIES

International Journal of Cultural Studies Pub Date : 2022-05-29 DOI:10.1177/13678779221090986

Rachel Lara van der Merwe

引用次数: 0

Abstract

This article examines a pattern of popular US audiovisual media depictions of post-apartheid South Africa, which portray SA as harbouring latent danger. I use these depictions as an entry point into a broader web of articulation that connects various theoretical lenses (including Othering and theories of fear), empirical data, and historical context in order to tell a conjunctural story about the precarity of US exceptionalism and Whiteness. Rather than reading these depictions as a suggestion that SA is a tangible threat of danger to the world, I argue that the strategic formation of these depictions reveals how the US experiences the uncanny (familiar unfamiliar) in SA, another significantly White settler-colonial state, and thus perceives a discursive threat of SA democracy to US exceptionalism on the global stage. This conjuncture, I suggest, reveals a discursive struggle over multicultural global futures and who gets to define democracy in the popular imagination.

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另一个母亲的兄弟:看看美国流行媒体对南非的离奇描述

这篇文章考察了美国流行的视听媒体对种族隔离后的南非的描述模式，这些描述将南非描绘成潜伏着危险。我将这些描述作为一个更广泛的表达网络的切入点，该网络连接了各种理论视角（包括其他和恐惧理论）、经验数据和历史背景，以讲述一个关于美国例外主义和白人主义不稳定的故事。我认为，这些描述的战略形成揭示了美国如何在另一个重要的白人定居者殖民国家南非经历不可思议（熟悉而陌生）的经历，从而感知到南非民主对美国在全球舞台上的例外主义的话语威胁。我认为，这一结合揭示了一场关于多元文化全球未来以及谁能在大众想象中定义民主的争论。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

International Journal of Cultural Studies Multiple-

CiteScore

4.20

自引率

9.50%

发文量

期刊介绍： International Journal of Cultural Studies is committed to rethinking cultural practices, processes, texts and infrastructures beyond traditional national frameworks and regional biases. The journal publishes theoretical, empirical and historical analyses that interrogate what culture means, and what culture does, across global and local scales of power and action, diverse technologies and forms of mediation, and multiple dimensions of performance, experience and identity. Dedicated to theoretical and methodological innovation in cultural research, the journal is multidisciplinary in outlook, publishing relevant contributions that integrate approaches from the social sciences, humanities, information sciences and more. International Journal of Cultural Studies publishes original research articles. The journal gives preference to papers that extend existing theory or generate new theory through interpretive engagement with empirical cases. Papers based on single country case-studies should clearly indicate and develop the broader relevance of their analyses for an international readership. The journal does not publish close readings of single texts; but it does consider critical, contextualised readings that similarly indicate and develop the broader relevance of their analyses to the field. International Journal of Cultural Studies regularly publishes special issues on urgent questions in the field as well as on specific regions, industries and practices.