ABSTRACT

This paper turns to the critically entangled terms of form and feeling as a basis for exploring post-2012 South African protest and visual cultures. Against the backdrop of a newly ascendant political vernacular characterised by the reluctance to dichotomise emotion and reason in negotiating the terms of contemporary dissent, I examine specifically how the consequences of political disenchantment are affectively negotiated in and through documentary form. Films such as The People Versus The Rainbow Nation Nelson Mandela: The Myth and Me Miners Shot Down and Strike a Rock have recently come to exemplify what Rob Nixon calls “the versatile possibilities of politically engaged nonfiction”. Taking Nelson Mandela: The Myth and Me and The People Versus The Rainbow Nation as case studies, I trace the historicity and aesthetic structures embedded in those aspects of the post-2012 South African documentary image that might be said not only to move viewers, but to be constitutive of each film’s formal arrangement. The films convey the entanglement of documentary intelligibility and feeling in ways that are particularly pertinent to making sense of the contemporary South African “liberation reimagined”.

摘要

本文探讨了形式和感觉的纠缠术语，以此作为探索2012年后南非抗议和视觉文化的基础。在一个新近崛起的政治白话语的背景下，我不愿意在协商当代异议人士时将情感和理性二等分，我专门研究了如何以纪录片形式和通过情感形式有效地谈判政治幻灭的后果。诸如《人民与彩虹国家》，《 纳尔逊·曼德拉：神话和我的 矿工被击落和打击岩石》等电影最近都成为罗伯·尼克松（Rob Nixon）所说的“从事政治非小说类作品的多种可能性”的例证。拿纳尔逊·曼德拉（Nelson Mandela）：神话与我和以“人民与彩虹国家”为案例研究，我追溯了2012年后南非纪录片图像中嵌入的历史性和美学结构，这些结构不仅可以感动观众，而且可以构成每部电影的正式安排。这些电影以与理解南非当代“重新想象的解放”特别相关的方式传达了纪录片的清晰度和感觉的纠结。