You Can't Go to War Without Song
Title | You Can't Go to War Without Song PDF eBook |
Author | Omotayo Jolaosho |
Publisher | Indiana University Press |
Pages | 310 |
Release | 2022-07-26 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0253063221 |
You Can't Go to War without Song explores the role of public performance in political activism in contemporary South Africa. Weaving together detailed ethnographic fieldwork and an astute theoretical framework, Omotayo Jolaosho examines the cohesive power of protest songs and dances within the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF), one of many social movements that emerged in the wake of South Africa's democratic transition after 1994. Jolaosho demonstrates the ways APF members adapted anti-apartheid songs and dance to create new expressive forms that informed and commented on their struggles for access to water, electricity, housing, education, and health facilities, the costs of which had been made prohibitive by privatization. You Can't Go to War without Song offers profiles of individual activists to amplify its central point: social movements like the APF are best understood as the coming together of individuals, and it is the songs and dances of the movement that bind these individual together and create opportunity for community organization. Chapters on women and youth complicate such understandings of community, however, showing how activist live and experiences are shaped by gender and generation.
"You Can't Go to War Without Song"
Title | "You Can't Go to War Without Song" PDF eBook |
Author | Omotayo Tolulope Jolaosho |
Publisher | |
Pages | 274 |
Release | 2013 |
Genre | Music |
ISBN |
This dissertation examines the role of performance in the constitution of activist community from the vantage point of the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF), one of many social movements that emerged in the wake of South Africa's democratic transition. The study begins with the premise that performance is integral to activism, constituting the very groundwork through which queries of justice occur. It updates historical scholarship on the complicated roles of anti-apartheid performances in South Africa, providing insight into shifting responses to challenges arising in the wake of democratic transition and the adoption of neoliberal economic policies. APF members actively adapted anti-apartheid songs and created new expressive forms to inform and comment on their struggles for access to water, electricity, housing, education and health facilities, the costs of which have been prohibitive due to their privatization. Based on 16 months of fieldwork involving participant-observation, interviews, and archival research, I investigated adaptations of anti-apartheid performances to changing social dynamics including changes in activists' relationship with the state, articulation of gender issues, emerging class-consciousness, and intergenerational linkages. The project considers performance in its multiple dimensions, ranging from routine enactments that secure, sustain, or weaken political outcomes to more practiced creative expression. I show how routine negotiations and artistic displays shaped APF's collective identity. Furthermore, through an integrative bodily approach to the study of political performances, I consider sensory experiences and their mediation, revealing how these experiences influenced the mobilization activities that activists pursued. Particularly in moments of creative expression, sensory experiences generated positive associations that made collective political struggle desirable. In contrast, however, sensory experience also yielded aversions: combativeness generated stress, eroded solidarity, and alienated many APF members. With consideration of these varied effects, the dissertation provides an expansive analysis of mobilization, emphasizing the role of performance in the conduct of politics.
Select Notes
Title | Select Notes PDF eBook |
Author | Francis Nathan Peloubet |
Publisher | |
Pages | 406 |
Release | 1900 |
Genre | International Sunday school lessons |
ISBN |
Select Notes
Title | Select Notes PDF eBook |
Author | Mary Abby Thaxter Peloubet |
Publisher | |
Pages | 414 |
Release | 1900 |
Genre | Bible |
ISBN |
The Sketch
Title | The Sketch PDF eBook |
Author | |
Publisher | |
Pages | 600 |
Release | 1914 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
Southern War Songs
Title | Southern War Songs PDF eBook |
Author | William Long Fagan |
Publisher | |
Pages | 408 |
Release | 1892 |
Genre | History |
ISBN |
The Pageant of America: American idealism, by L.A. Weigle
Title | The Pageant of America: American idealism, by L.A. Weigle PDF eBook |
Author | Ralph Henry Gabriel |
Publisher | |
Pages | 376 |
Release | 1928 |
Genre | United States |
ISBN |