ABSTRACT

Drawing on theorisations of popular culture as a site of cultural hegemony and Bourdieu’s sociology of taste, this paper is an analysis of social media discourses about Skhosana Buhlungu’s song Dlala ntethe. Our main thesis is that the song became the locus of expression and contestations about ethnic identity. We demonstrate how the song, like all forms of popular culture, became implicated in the ideological battle for cultural hegemony in a highly ethnicised Zimbabwean society. The paper is based on purposively sampled Facebook and Twitter posts gathered via manual web crawling using the hashtags #Dlala ntethe and #Ntethe. A thematic analysis of the data reveals that aesthetic endorsement of the song became a marker of ethnicity. Findings demonstrate that taste for Dlala ntethe was subordinated to the logic of an essentialist Ndebele ethnic solidarity. Additionally, it emerged from the analysis that when it was expedient to do so, Ndebele identity was framed as a fluid cultural construct that is conferred or revoked depending on one’s disposition towards Dlala ntethe. Relatedly, debates about the aesthetic quality of Skhosana’s music reveal an ethnic double standard where similar musical offerings by Shona and South African musicians are not subjected to the same standard.

摘要

本文借鉴流行文化作为文化霸权场所的理论和布迪厄的品味社会学，分析了社交媒体上关于 Skhosana Buhlungu 的歌曲Dlala ntethe的话语。我们的主要论点是，这首歌成为了关于民族认同的表达和争论的场所。我们展示了这首歌如何像所有形式的流行文化一样，在高度种族化的津巴布韦社会中卷入文化霸权的意识形态斗争中。该论文基于使用标签#Dlala ntethe 和#Ntethe 通过手动网络抓取收集的有目的地抽样的 Facebook 和 Twitter 帖子。对数据的主题分析表明，对歌曲的审美认可成为种族的标志。调查结果表明对Dlala ntethe的品味服从于本质主义恩德贝莱民族团结的逻辑。此外，从分析中发现，当权宜之计这样做时，恩德贝勒身份被框定为一种流动的文化结构，根据个人对Dlala ntethe的性格而被授予或撤销。与此相关的是，关于斯科萨纳音乐美学品质的争论揭示了一种民族双重标准，即绍纳和南非音乐家的类似音乐作品不受相同标准的约束。