This paper argues that historically, the production of townships was premised on the existence of fixed and docile bodies. The creation of township space, worked to cast ‘black’ identity into a fixed territory. The result is a limited range of negotiable spaces for the ‘black’ body and ‘black’ psyche. The institutionalization of apartheid, formed part and parcel of locking ‘black’ people outside the city, dompass (identity card during the apartheid regime – that every ‘non-white’ individual had to carry) and racial categorization are extreme examples of such fixing. The township became a landscape of poverty and constituted the ‘other modernity – or the underside of [Johannesburg’s] modernity’ (Mbembe and Nuttall 2004: 364). Mbembe and Nuttall describe how myths about modernity were perpetuated repeatedly through the perception of the city space as contaminated and alienating for the ‘black’ body.In this paper I discuss these issues in the following sections: urban planning, townships and race; the issue of authenticity; the sentient ‘black’ body: photography, installation and performance; on blackness and ideas.Urban Planning, Townships and Race The creation of townships was premised on producing fixed and docile bodies. Ellapen argues; It should be noted that from the township’s earliest development, this space was a liminal space (inbetweeness), a threshold space developed as a port into major cities, further pointing out that the hybridity of the ‘township space’ lies in its position as an ‘alternate geography of modernity’. The ‘township space’ developed as a peripheral space and was never allowed to be fully modern (as represented in the city space), nor was it allowed to be fully rural (as represented by the rural landscape). The township became a hybrid space in that its position in relation to modernity could never be realised totally (2009:20). Socio-politically, townships were constructed with the idea of locking it in ‘timeless aesthetics’ – as reiterated before, the mandate for the production of townships was to create fixed and docile bodies. “The danger of fixing the identity of places within clearly demarcated boundaries is that the spaces or places become characterised by ‘singular’, ‘fixed’ and ‘static’ identities. Such enclosed spaces and places become defined through their relationship with ‘other’ legitimate spaces” (Ellapen, 2009:26). As Ellapen allows us to see, the architectural layout of township’s afforded the apartheid regime a power to fix a so-called ‘timeless aesthetics’ by controlling physical space. The link between space, architecture and racial, cultural and the launch of South African democracy.
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 10:44:18 +0000
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