Understanding whiteness in South Africa with specific reference to the art of Brett Murray.
| dc.contributor.advisor | Leeb-du Toit, Juliette Cecile. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Passmoor, Ross P. | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2010-09-09T10:51:09Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2010-09-09T10:51:09Z | |
| dc.date.created | 2009 | |
| dc.date.issued | 2009 | |
| dc.description | Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2009. | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | The white male artist whose self-interrogation attaches to his whiteness, difference and former centrality, inevitably exposes himself to the critical scrutiny of current discourse on race and whiteness studies. In this dissertation I examine the concept and emergence of whiteness as a dominant construct in select socio-historical contexts, more particularly in the colonial sphere. While colonial whiteness has often failed to acknowledge or foreground the faceted nature of its composition, this became particularly marked in a South African context with polarisation in the political, cultural and linguistic spheres. However in encounters with the colonised, unifying pretensions of whiteness prevailed, reinforcing difference along racial lines. I examine the work of white South African male artist Brett Murray, in which the interrogation of whiteness and associated marginalization and invisibility is again foregrounded, but predominantly in a postcolonial context. As Murray cautiously navigates his satirical gaze at the culturally and conceptually flawed hybridity of South African (male) whiteness, he inadvertently exposes a nostalgic gaze at erstwhile racial centrality. I further consider whether as a postcolonial other Murray has in fact been able to transcend racially based self-interrogation by addressing more polemic issues associated with power, corruption and inhumanity that transcend race. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10413/1042 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.subject | Theses--Fine art. | en_US |
| dc.subject | Artists--South Africa. | en_US |
| dc.subject | White men--South Africa. | en_US |
| dc.subject | Whites--Race identity--South Africa. | en_US |
| dc.subject | Whites in art. | en_US |
| dc.title | Understanding whiteness in South Africa with specific reference to the art of Brett Murray. | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_US |