Department of Visual Arts

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Writing white on black : modernism as discursive paradigm in South African writing on modern Black art
(Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2006-03) Van Robbroeck, Lize; Klopper, Sandra; Cilliers, Paul; University of Stellenbosch. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Visual Arts.
In this thesis I deconstruct key concepts, terminologies, and rhetorical conventions employed in white South African writing on modern black art. I trace the genealogy of the dominant discursive practices of the apartheid era to the cultural discourses of the colonial era, which in turn had their origins in the Enlightenment. This genealogical tracing aims to demonstrate that South African art writing of the 20th century partook of a tradition of Western writing that was primarily intent upon producing the Western subject as a rational Enlightenment agent via the debased objectification of the colonial Other. In the process of the deconstruction, I identify the most significant discursive shifts that occurred from the 1930’s, when the first publications emerged, to the 1990’s, when South Africa’s new political dispensation opened up a different cultural landscape.