Kwaito bodies in African diaspora space: The politics of popular music in post -apartheid South Africa

This dissertation makes two central assertions. First, that musical practices are integral to the study of the African Diaspora. Secondly, that the relationship between resistance, agency and musical practices within Afrodiasporic aesthetics must be re-examined. In particular, I identify the problem of unidirectional, teleological flows that emphasize physical displacement and migration as central components to the study of the African Diaspora. I argue that envisioning the African Diaspora in this way can only produce a limited understanding of contemporary sociocultural processes on the African continent and within the African Diaspora. This is because in its typical configuration, African Diaspora Studies has a tendency to produce an Africa that is imagined as little more than a historical site of origin. Subsequently the coeval relationship of Africa within African Diaspora Studies is denied.;In this dissertation I assert that Africa must be written back into the African Diaspora. I suggest that teleological, unidirectional flows that emphasize historical connections and are based on migration from a point of origin to numerous sites of dispersal reveal only a small portion of what makes the African Diaspora. I suggest that popular cultural practices, in particular musical practices, are central to the understanding of the African Diaspora that is "polyphonic," multi-directional and continuously in production. The examination of kwaito musical practices in post-apartheid South Africa reveals contemporary musical practices on the African continent to be Afrodiasporic in formation and circulation.;I develop an idea that I call "African Diaspora Space" to speak to the re-envisioning of African Diaspora Studies. The African Diaspora is more than a set of historical experiences. Borrowing from Avtar Brah, I suggest that the African Diaspora Space should be employed as a theoretical concept that emphasizes a number of historically and socially specific genealogies. Those who have been displaced and those that were left behind equally inhabit African Diaspora Space. Africa and the African Diaspora inherit, not the same physical space, but the same conceptual and ideological space, that forms the basis of intellectual inquiry and political action.;Kwaito is a lens through which the operation of this African Diaspora Space can be understood in a specific, situated context. I show how the musical practices associated with kwaito produce particular understandings of young, black bodies in post-apartheid South Africa. Furthermore, I show how these "kwaito bodies" exist in, and create African Diaspora Space. By examining the idea of cultural mixing, the remaking of space and subjectivities in the contemporary Johannesburg, and performative black identities in kwaito, I show how "kwaito bodies" relate to African Diaspora Space. I conclude that the these "kwaito bodies" work to enact practices of freedom that produce tangible effects central to understanding post-apartheid South Africa.