Published 01 November 2021 in News
The South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI)
'FAMILY DISSEMBLANCE: a coda to gendering in Afrikaner nationalist discourse' Curated by Dr Annemi Conradie
The South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI)
15 November 2021 - 18 March 2022
Participating Artists: Andre Trantraal, Anton Kannemeyer, Cobus Haupt, Daniel More, Daria Kriel, Daneel Koetzee, Ilené Bothma, Gretchen Crots, Johannes Meintjies, Joy Shan, Lindokuhle Sobekwa, Nathan Trantraal, Nico Ras, Paul Stopforth, Pierre Fouché, Robert Hamblin, Russell Scott, Wikus de Wet, Octavia Roodt, Richardt Strydom.
Virtual exhibition, hosted by the National Research Foundation (NRF) South African Research Chair in South African Art and Visual Culture, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Johannesburg, Gauteng Province, South Africa.
Curatorial Statement:
For George Lakoff (1996) the nation as a family is one of the most common ways that we conceptualise nations, with the government placed in the role of parent and citizens assuming the role of children who are under the care and authority of this parent. The metaphor of a family suggests natural and essential ties that bind its members, as well as shared characteristics such as language, religion, ethnicity, cultural traditions and more. Central to twentieth-century Afrikaner nationalism were the concepts and presumably shared characteristics of racial whiteness, the Afrikaans language, Christian Protestant faith and legitimate belonging to the land. These characteristics have, however, been exposed as tenets of myth rather than facts of history or biology. Nations, scholars have shown since the 1980s, are the products of imagination and “historical and institutional practices through which social differences are invented and performed” (McClintock 1993:62; Anderson 1991).
This does not mean that feelings of patriotism, national belonging and connection are not real, or that the actions and consequences of decisions made in the name of these myths have not been real. Worldwide, economic, psychological, and social consequences of actions taken for the sake of the national ‘family’, have been devastating and far-reaching: for those regarded as family members, and those deemed outsiders.
The grand narratives that underpin Afrikaner nationalist ideology are deeply gendered. Anne McClintock (1993:63) notes that “nationalism is [...] constituted from the very beginning as a gendered discourse” and that “nations are symbolically figured as domestic genealogies”. Under apartheid, firm notions of ideal, heterosexual (white) masculinity and femininity were perpetuated through educational, religious, and civic institutions. The gender ideals of this national family found expression in the figures and tropes of the 'Voortrekker' (pioneer) or Boer patriarch, the 'Volksmoeder' (mother of the volk) and Boer 'nooientjie' (maiden), which were incessantly reproduced by the nationalist media in the arts and popular culture.
From the final decades of the twentieth century and the end of apartheid, a fair number of artists critically investigated this gendering of white Afrikaner nationalism and identity, and the changes that occurred in its discourses over time. In the twenty-first century, artists from various backgrounds continue to explore and grapple with the intersections of gender with discourses of (Afrikaner) nationalism, race, language, class, and belonging.
FAMILY DISSEMBLANCE
The word ‘dissemblance’ at once refers to a lack of resemblance (dissimilitude) and the act or the art of dissembling, or to put on an appearance. At quick glance the word can also remind one of the verb ‘disassemble’, or to take apart. In a play on the phrase ‘family resemblance’, this exhibition brings together artworks that invite critical reflections on the nation-as-family metaphor and its dependence on gendered bodies, fabricated likenesses, and deep omissions.
This exhibition presents a snapshot of dissimilitude and the disassembly of the tropes and ideals – some seemingly innocuous – that have often masked the inequality, discrimination, and violence at the heart of this ethno-national ‘family’. Shown together, the artworks highlight the 'un-likeness' of perspectives, positionalities, identifications, and embodied stories that emerge from or intersect with contemporary experiences. The works were selected and positioned in ways that might help us interrogate the excisions and omissions – of bodies and voices – that are made from the image or portrait of a nation, a linguistic or ethnic community. Through strategies of appropriation, parody or satire, artists also unmask and re-deploy past tropes and ideals to negotiate the ongoing impact of nationalist discourse on the body and the body politic, even decades after it was officially deposed.
- George Lakoff, 1996. 'Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know that Liberals Don’t'. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
- Anderson, B. 1983. 'Imagined Communities'. London: Verso.
- Anne McClintock. 1993. Family Feuds: Gender, Nationalism, and the Family. 'Feminist Review': Nationalisms and National Identities (44), Summer: 61-80.
- The term refers to white settlers of Dutch origin, who settled in Southern African from the seventeenth century and are regarded as ancestors of white Afrikaners.
For more information and to view the exhibition, please navigate to The South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) website here.
Image Credit: Daria Kriel l 'Tongklap Collage' l 2019
