Reading rubbish: pre-apartheid to post-apartheid South African kitsch

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis is concerned with kitsch as cultural phenomena, which it will approach as aspecific 'aspect', or 'product' of modernity. In doing so, this thesis aims to interrogate thenotion of modernity, through an analysis of kitsch. In the first place, modernity can bethought as a collection of progressive material changes, usually associated with the onsetof the industrial revolution. In this sense, it is easy to establish kitsch as a typical productof modernity, as the latter literally provided the objective conditions of possibility for theproduction of cheap, easily reproducible industrial goods, with which kitsch is oftenassociated. In the second place, more than a set of material changes however, modernityalso entailed a concomitant series of cultural values, the rational, scientific worldviewassociated with the onset of the Enlightenment. The thesis will therefore also considerhow kitsch can be regarded as a direct expression of these values, in as much as thecharacteristic falseness and conformity of kitsch might be seen as a typical product of thisrational, utilitarian worldview. In the third place, modernity also refers to the combinedeffect of these material conditions and cultural values. Kitsch will be considered, then,also in relation to this 'life-world'. Importantly, the thesis seeks to demonstrate how theinherent contradictions of modernity become particularly apparent in kitsch.The connection between colonialism and the Enlightenment is nothing new. Indeed, thecolonial project was driven by the notion that the West was responsible for the'modernization and 'upliftment of the rest of the world. However, the idea ofmodernity as a universal, ideologically neutral concept is deeply problematic. Indeed, thiscan also be considered as one of the contradictions inherent in modernity. By looking atSouth African kitsch, this thesis will examine the possibility that, as a typical product ofmodernity produced in a local context, it can reveal much about the manifestations or'trajectory' of modernity outside the metropolitan centres, where it is usually located.This will be explored by examining, on the one hand, the local 'trajectory' of thediscourse of modernity, and, secondly, to the place assigned to people within the creationof these local modernities

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University