Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Steve Biko and Stoned Cherrie: refashioning the body politic in democratic South Africa |
Author: | Vincent, Louise |
Year: | 2007 |
Periodical: | African Sociological Review (ISSN 1027-4332) |
Volume: | 11 |
Issue: | 2 |
Pages: | 80-93 |
Language: | English |
Notes: | biblio. refs. |
Geographic terms: | South Africa Southern Africa |
Subjects: | clothing industry female dress politics identity History, Archaeology Fashion Clothing and dress--History Biko, Steve, 1946-1977 |
About person: | Stephen Bantu Biko (1946-1977) |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/24487625 |
Abstract: | In contemporary South Africa, the politics of protest has given way to a new dynamic of black economic empowerment, the rise of a new black middle class and, with these, expressions of confident middle class black individuality. The mass character of politics prior to 1994 has given way to the more prosaic forms associated with a constitutional democracy. But there have also been ways in which these two tropes have melded. This article examines one particular fashion moment in contemporary South Africa: the employment of the image of martyr of the anti-apartheid movement, Steve Biko, on haute couture women's t-shirts by award-winning local fashion brand Stoned Cherrie. Stoned Cherrie's use of Steve Biko's image as a fashion accessory is provocative because it instigates a renegotiation of meaning both of the past (apartheid, anti-apartheid struggle and its heroes) and the present (femininity, African identity, the distinction between the public and the private, the body and the social). Conventional practices of interpreting both the feminine and the political are here challenged, giving rise to multiple possible readings - profaning Biko, making politics hip, fashioning the self, contesting dominant gender norms - which are difficult to order hierarchically or to reduce to a single overarching logic. Bibliogr., sum. [ASC Leiden abstract] |