Publication: Plural Ghetto. Phaswane Mpe’s "Welcome to Our Hillbrow" (2001), Neill Bloemkamp’s "District 9" (2009) and the crisis in the representation of spaces in post-apartheid South Africa
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Date
2012
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EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste
Abstract
As Phaswane Mpe’s novel "Welcome to our Hillbrow" (2001) convincingly
shows, the crisis suffered by post-apartheid ideological discourses is intimately
related to a crisis in the representation of spaces. As a matter of
fact, the demise of the apartheid regime of racial segregation has not led
to a completely new spatial organization, producing, rather, a multiplicity
of boundaries which range from the apartheid model of the township to
newly constituted “migrant ghettos” such as Hillbrow, in the heart of
Johannesburg.
While South African spatiality is interrogated by Mpe’s novel though
issues such as inter-African migration, AIDS and persisting forms of prejudice
and racism, a comparison between Mpe’s novel and Neill
Bloemkamp’s blockbuster movie "District 9" (2009) hints at the permanence
of corporate violence as a major cause for this political and economic
failure, by connecting it to a global scenario.
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Lorenzo Mari, "Plural Ghetto. Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to "Our Hillbrow" (2001), Neill Bloemkamp’s "District 9" (2009) and the crisis in the representation of spaces in post-apartheid South Africa", in: Prospero. Rivista di letterature e culture straniere, XVII (2012), pp. 265-285.