Browsing by Author "Meyer, Simonn"

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    Party politics: An exploration of Cape Town queer nightlife and what it reveals about the politics of space and identification in post-apartheid South Africa
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2022-12) Meyer, Simonn; Dubbeld, Bernard; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Sociology and Social Anthropology.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis aims to examine the way in which space and identity are related and co-constructed, by utilizing Queer Nightlife as a lens through which spatiality and identity operate in post-apartheid South Africa. By exploring space and identity through the lens of Queer Nightlife spaces, this study also subsequently captured the utility and limitations of the Queer political project. This study focuses on Queer Nightlife spaces in Cape Town, and more specifically in Cape Town’s ‘Gay Village’, De Waterkant. Methodologically, this study made use of qualitative interviews with queer-identifying individuals between the ages of 18 to 40, along with critical ethnography that was centered on fieldwork expeditions to two Queer Nightlife spaces. Critical discourse analysis and Butler’s Theory of performativity were used to analyze findings and to investigate how queer performativity operates within the Queer Nightlife space. The argument this thesis makes, is that Queer, which is a radical and transformative politic, has shifted towards queer identity politics within the neoliberal, capitalist setting of Cape Town. The findings of this thesis illustrates that the utility and praxis of Queer Theory and Queer Politics is undermined when Queer is presented as a stable, universal identity. This thesis argues that Queer Nightlife spaces in Cape Town illustrate how this shift towards queer identity politics operates and highlights how the stable identity that is performed and celebrated in these spaces takes on a raced, gendered, and classed form that is centered on consumption and desire. This study is therefore a critical reflection on the operation of Queer politics in post-apartheid South Africa.