INTRODUCTION

This introductory essay considers how we might forge a critical language to discuss an emerging constellation of cultural production in South Africa: that which focuses on the work of ‘intimate exposure’ in order to shape a public–private sphere, which in turn forges forms of citizenship unavailable, or submerged by, a history of segregation. We ask the two following questions in order to better understand the dynamics of desegregation and re-racialization in twenty-first century South Africa: what is at stake in the dynamics of private exposure, particularly, but not limited to, the work of contemporary artists, be it exposure of the self or exposure of the lives of others – out of aggression or tenderness, as a gesture of ordinariness or excess, in relation to strangeness or love? Moreover, how do new dramas of secrecy, confession and exposure map onto or circumvent the staging of these issues during the apartheid years, which, itself layering over the scars of the colonial period, provide the subterranean foundation across which recent events play out? Addressing these and other questions takes us through a series of debates animating the current global and South African cultural studies.     

INTRODUCTION

Neoliberal politics can be defined with a Gramscian term as “passive revolution”; an act of making history, that is, without conveying to people the idea that they are an active part in its shaping. Apart from demoralization, this politics has also brought on a new active subject whose key features are individual agility and cleverness. But how is it possible that a passive revolution should result in active subjects? The analysis is presented in three steps: part one casts a glimpse at the construction of a new, agile subject in theory, film and literature; part two refers to Gramsci for an analysis of neoliberalism as passive revolution; part three seeks to outline possible transitions from mere agility to strategy, from individual tricks to social experience, from irony to dialectics.