"Some White Women (Are Not Like That)". Affective Gestures in Post-Apartheid Visual Art from South Africa

This article examines a selection of artistic production by four white South African women after apartheid ended, whose work articulates affects associated with nostalgic desire and loss. By thinking through performativity as theorised by Sara Ahmed and Judith Butler, the article explores some of the problematics of affective responses in the context of whiteness as master narrative in a postcolonial country in which a settler population still holds vast material wealth, power and privilege. The article positions the affects produced in artworks in conversation with issues of race and gender, by looking at some caveats raised by theorists of race in this regard. Instances of reactive racial performativity that reify whiteness are identified, paired with moments of resistance to the narrow confines of race and gender that exist in contemporary South Africa. By employing a reparative reading, this article asks how affective gestures could possibly lead to positive action and change.