Un/making Difference through Performance and Mediation in Contemporary Africa

Special Issue of Journal of African Cultural Studies
Edited by Heike Becker & Dorothea Schulz

This volume starts from the observation of a massive revival of cultural and religious identities across the African continent, stretching from post-apartheid South Africa to Islamist groups in parts of West Africa. Africa appears to be witnessing a historical moment characterized by a resurgence of a politics of difference that shares an uncanny ability to produce and sustain identities.

The introduction emphasizes that, over and beyond an analysis of the sociopolitical dimensions of the post cold war era, a closer understanding is needed of the ways in which forms of cultural performance contribute to the processes of claiming and generating difference and identity.

The collection brings together case studies from West, East and South Africa, as well the African diaspora in Europe.

Read the introduction here.