Black people in post-colonial South Africa a genealogical analysis of dominant and plural narratives of black people in 20th-21st century

Abstract

This disquisition is an inter-disciplinary investigation into some dominant hegemonic narratives of black people in 20th-21st century South Africa as they are found in public discourses. I contend that there exist hegemonic narratives of black people which can be seen within the African Nationalism debates in South Africa. While not all hegemonic narratives of black people are African nationalist discourses, I illustrate how nationalism is a proverbial vehicle for the dissemination of a ‘truth’ and or a ‘unitary’ understanding of black people in South Africa over others. To be sure, the African Nationalism debates evinces the power/-knowledge dynamics imbued in the meaning, functions, and performances of black people This is with the aim to foreground the less dominant everyday lived experiences and narratives of black people. I do this with the use of the genealogical method of analysis so as to suspend historiographies and/or approaches to historiography that essentializes and advance absolute origins surrounding discourses on black people in South Africa. I aim to throw the fault lines of these dominant narratives into relief by way of a genealogical reading of various different and alternative historiographies, which include the works of black authors, black philosophers and black thinkers. Certainly, a genealogical analysis will aid me in foregrounding the plurality of Blackness. Conversely, my study aims to consider the degree to which these singular lived experiences, those that counter dominant hegemonic narratives, reflect sectors of black society rather than just individual particularities so as to further understand the post-colonial black condition.