Vol 35, No 1 (2016)

This article critically examines the conventional researcher-researched relationship that
empowers the researcher over the researched. The orthodoxy of objectivity – claimed to locate
the researchers as neutral observer – is here argued to be a power relation that has an excluding
effect where subject communities are concerned. By means of an archaeological case study that
included mapping and interpretation of ancient rock engravings we offer a new way of negotiating
interpretations. This new way involved four members from a Bushman community who helped us
navigate spiritual, ontological and environmental dimensions in making sense of rock art.

This article explores, through a basic conceptual-theoretical analysis and a review of relevant
literature, the usefulness of employing the communicative action theory of Jürgen Habermas
in theorising the elusive notions of participation and participatory communication theory as
applicable to project based development (Burnside-Lawry, 2012; Chang & Jacobson, 2010;
Jacobson, 2003; Jacobson & Storey, 2004; Ramella & De La Cruz, 2000; Servaes, 1999). The
problem with defining participation is that it is ambiguous – both notionally and in actual contexts
– as the concept comprises a myriad of dissimilar epistemologies, methodologies and imagined
goals, while also representing disparate evaluative measures in thinking about and determining
whether or not participation has actually occurred in its various applied settings (Chitnis, 2005;
Huesca, 2008; Jacobson & Storey, 2004; McAnany, 2012; Melkote & Steeves, 2001; Morris,
2003; Wilkins, 2000).

The relationship between a personal identity and the state-issued Identity Document (ID) is
the focus of this article, which examines stories published in the “Horror Affairs” column of the
popular South African tabloid, the Daily Sun. These highly emotional stories tell of the despair and
desperation felt by individuals at the lack of an ID book, which is blamed on the inefficiency of the
state Department of Home Affairs. In order to explicate this relationship I make use of Agamben’s
notion of “bare life” and the camp in conjunction with Lacan’s idea of the Symbolic Order to
argue that if the Identity Document provides the means by which the individual is made to signify,
the lack of an Identity Document threatens to reduce the individual to “bare life”. By publishing
the stories of those deprived of the visibility that the ID provides, the Daily Sun, I show, directly
engages in this exchange, and, in contrast to Home Affairs, bestows its own even stronger gift of
identity by the fact of appearance in its pages.

This article argues that Steve Hofmeyr’s Afrikaner identity, an identity he performs across various
media platforms, including a selection of feature length Afrikaans films, is a paradoxical hybrid
of Afrikaner exceptionalism and claims to victimhood. The exceptionalism and self-imposed
victimhood are engaged in an across-media dialogue, as Steve Hofmeyr’s social media and
political activist persona speak to his participation in three Afrikaans language films: Pretville
(Korsten, 2012), Platteland (Else, 2011) and Treurgrond (Roodt, 2015). Hofmeyr’s presence
foregrounds and exacerbates an already problematic ideological context in which attempts at
multiculturalism are rendered moot by the conservatism in these films, especially where land – the
farm – is concerned. While Pretville invents a 1950s South African town that fails to correspond to
any inhabited reality of that time, Platteland offers an Afrikaans musical-western wherein Hofmeyr
dominates as patriarch. Finally, the attempts of Treurgrond at raising farm murder awareness
are nullified through casting Hofmeyr as a farmer facing a land claim, given Hofmeyr’s active
campaigning against an alleged Boer genocide.

The film Twilight produced by Wyck Godfrey, Mark Morgan and Greg Mooradian and directed
by Catherine Hardwicke, enjoyed global box office success, and proved particularly popular
with female filmgoers. Despite the commercial success of the film, it was derided specifically
by feminist critics for its portrayal of women and heterosexual relationships. Within the context
of postfeminist views of gender roles, this article explores how selected female South African
viewers’ between the ages of 18 and 45 living in Johannesburg perceived the romance between
Edward and Bella in the film Twilight (2008). Participants were divided into age-determined focus
groups and each participant completed a questionnaire containing a list of questions around the
genre of the film, their feelings about individual characters and their reasons for watching the film.
Interview data in the form of quotes from individual participants has been included in the article.

In his autobiography, Conversations with Myself, Mandela spoke about his concern that the world
had a false image of him as a saint and semi-god (Mandela, 2012). However, it can be noted that
Mandela and the ANC carefully built up his symbolic power in the press and media to represent
him as “some kind of Messiah” (Ottaway, 1993:11) who had led South Africa to freedom almost
single-handedly, and in doing so cemented his ideals of liberation, peace and non-racialisation
in the imagination of the world. However, as Mandela’s health deteriorated before his death, his
constructed immortality was tested as society began to question if his legacy could live on without
the physical presence of ‘Mandela the man’. Consequently, this article examines the representation
of Mandela in his few final years. In an examination of the Independent Online news repository in
2010 and 2013, this research highlights how ‘Madiba’s Magic’ was a carefully constructed media
image and one that, during his long illness, forced South Africans, and the world, to recognise his
‘humanness’. The paper concludes, however, by documenting the immense power of Mandela’s
legacy as played out in the press, and how, after death, his carefully constructed legacy rose
above the damage of his prolonged illness, elevating him from a sick old man and reinforcing him
as a mythical revolutionary.

In what follows the idea of the online double is historically contextualised and analysed. Beginning
with the contemporary idea of the ‘selfie’ as online self-induced double, I proceed to discuss the
Doppelgänger’s (double) mythical and literary roots, in order to expand the discussion of the selfie
to include the online double. Two instances of the online double are unpacked, namely the double
as shadow and the double as a stand-in or alter-ego, which correspond significantly with Marshall
McLuhan’s analysis of the Narcissus myth and technological use. McLuhan reveals the doubled
nature of our technological engagement that leads to either self-amputation or self-amplification.
In my analysis, the double as shadow is correlated with self-amputation and the double as alterego
with self-amplification. It is argued that the double as shadow is evoked online through the
mining of data regarding the self that is captured consciously and unconsciously to create what
is known as the Data Doppelgänger. The figure of the Doppelgänger is further vividly conjured
through virtual stand-ins or alter-egos that act on behalf of the self to create a tele-presence
through examples such as Project Lifelike and rep.licants.org.

This paper reports on a quantitative content analysis of 2,699 images of women present in one
year’s worth of the South African edition of Glamour magazine. Motivated by critical race theory,
black feminist thought and critical consumption studies, the aim of the study was to determine how
often black women were represented in the sample and, further, to examine the particular body
types and hairstyles preferred in the aesthetic of black women featured. The findings showed that
even though Glamour magazine claims that 65% of its readership is comprised of black women,
they feature in only 30% of images, and when present, have hairstyles and body types most
commonly associated with white supremacist ideas of beauty. The (albeit unsurprising) failure
of Glamour magazine to adequately represent a diversity of black femininities is theorised as a
result of pervasive neo-liberal, racist and patriarchal structures of power in post-apartheid South
Africa. We argue that the case study illuminates a racially charged post-feminist moment, in which
black women are represented as valuable only in terms of their proximity to a white ideal, and
valued only in terms of their lucrative potential as an aspirant, compliant mass market.