Cover not available
Article published In:
Language & Citizenship
Edited by Tommaso M. Milani
[Journal of Language and Politics 14:3] 2015
► pp. 431–454

Sexual cityzenship

Discourses, spaces and bodies at Joburg Pride 2012

| University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg |

This article explores an incident that took place in the context of Joburg Pride 2012, where the activist group One in Nine Campaign attempted to temporarily stop the Pride parade through means of a die-in protest, resulting in resistance and violence on the part of the Pride participants. The article argues that Pride and the One in Nine protest are manifestations of two very different types of sexual cityzenship. Whilst Pride is an orderly claim to the urban environment that is founded on an alignment with state-sanctioned, rights-based discourses of gay and lesbian identity, the One in Nine protest is a spatial disruption that problematises the optimistic reliance on sexual identities as catalysts for political action. The article also seeks to offer a queer epistemology that questions the logocentric bias of research on discourse, space and citizenship by encompassing not only the visual but also and most importantly the corporeal.

Keywords: affect, citizenship, linguistic landscapes, national identity, queer, sexuality, South Africa, space
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Discourse-Based Studies on Citizenship Meet Research on Linguistic Landscapes… Through Sexuality
  • 3.Joburg Pride vs. One in Nine Campaign
    • 3.1Joburg Pride 2012
    • 3.2One in Nine Campaign
  • 4.Troubling Performances of Sexual Cityzenship
    • 4.1Pride/shame and national identity: Proudly South African or not?
    • 4.2History repeats… uncannily: Black bodies on the tarmac
  • 5.Concluding Remarks
  • References
Published online: 21 August 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.14.3.06mil
References
Ahmed, Sara
2004 “Affective Economies.” Social Text 22 (2): 117–139. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Altman, Dennis
1996 “Rupture or Continuity? The Internationalization of Gay Identities.” Social Text 14 (3): 77–94. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Benedict
1983 Imagined Communities: On the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail
1984 Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1986 Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bell, David, and Jon Binnie
2000 The Sexual Citizen: Queer Politics and Beyond. London: Polity.Google Scholar
Bell, David, and Gill Valentine
(eds) 1995 Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexuality. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Besnier, Niko
2009 Gossip and the Everyday Production of Politics. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Billig, Michael
1995 Banal Nationalism. Thousand Oaks: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blackledge, Adrian
2005 Discourse and Power in a Multilingual World. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre
1992 Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary
2003 “Sociolinguistic Nostalgia and the Authentication of Identity.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 7 (3): 398–416. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary, and Kira Hall
2005 “Identity and Interaction: A Sociocultural Linguistic Approach.” Discourse Studies 7 (4–5): 585–614. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Butler, Judith
1997 Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas
2003 “Sociolinguistic Authenticities.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 7 (3): 417–431. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007 Style: Language Variation and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deleuze,Gilles
1994 “He Stuttered.” In Deleuze and the Theater of Philosophy: Critical Essays, ed. by Constantin V. Boundas, and Dorothea Olkowski, 23–29. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari
1980 A Thousands Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Del Rio, Elena
2008 Deleuze and the Cinemas of Performance: Powers of Affection. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Waal, Shaun, and Anthony Manion
2006 Pride: Protest and Celebration. Auckland Park: Jacana.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques
1997 Of Grammatology. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Extra, Guus, Spotti, Massimiliano, and Piet van Avermaet
(eds) 2009 Language Testing, Migration and Citizenship : A Cross-National Perspective on Integration Regimes. London: Continuum. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fleetwood, Nicole
2011 Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality and Blackness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel
1977 Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Allen Lane. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1978 The Will to Knowledge. The History of Sexuality Vol. 11. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Fraser, Nancy
1992 “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” In Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. by Craig Calhoun, 109–142. Boston: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund
2003 [1919] The Uncanny. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gevisser, Mark, and Edwin Cameron
(eds) 1997 Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Africa. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Grosz, Elisabeth
1994 Volatile bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halperin, David M
1995 Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hansen-Thomas, Holly
2007 “Language Ideology, Citizenship and Identity: The Case of Modern Germany.” Journal of Language and Politics 6 (2): 249–264. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hogan-Brun, Gabriella, Mar-Molinero, Clare, and Patrick Stevenson
(eds) 2009 Discourses on Language and Integration: Critical Perspectives on Language Testing Regimes in Europe. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holston, James
2009 Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Isin, Engin F
2008 “Theorizing Acts of Citizenship.” In Acts of Citizenship, ed. by Engin F. Isin, and Greg M. Nielsen, 15–43. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Jagose, Annamarie
1996 Queer Theory: An Introduction. New York: NYU Press.Google Scholar
Johnston, Lynda, and Robyn Longhurst
2010 Space, Place and Sex: Geographies of Sexualities. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martin-Rojo, Luisa
2012 “Taking over the squares.” Panel presented at Sociolinguistics Symposium 19, Berlin 22–24 August 2012.
Massey, Doreen B
1994 Space, Place and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
McCormick, Tracey Lee
2012 Resisting the Queer? Representations of Identity and Politics in South African English Non-Fiction Gay and Lesbian Books (1992–2008). Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand.
Milani, Tommaso M
2008 “Language Testing and Citizenship: A Language Ideological Debate in Sweden.” Language in Society 37 (1): 27–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 “Sexed Signs – Queering the Scenery.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2281: 201–225. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mouffe, Chantal
2000 On the Political. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Munt, Sally
2008 Queer Attachments: The Cultural Politics of Shame. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Muth, Sebastian
2014 “Informal Signs as Expressions of Multilingualism in Chisinau: How Individuals Shape the Public Space of a Post-Soviet Capital.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mutua, Makau
2002 Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nayak, Anoop
2010 “Race, Affect, and Emotion: Young People, Racism, and Graffiti in the Postcolonial English Suburbs.” Environment and Planning A 42 (10): 2370–2392. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nuttall, Sarah
2008 Entanglement: Literary and Cultural Reflections on Post-Apartheid. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.Google Scholar
Oswin, Natalie
2008 “Critical Geographies and the Uses of Sexuality.” Progress in Human Geography 32 (1): 89–103. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Papen, Uta
2012 “Commercial Discourses, Gentrification and Citizens’ Protest: The Linguistic Landscape of Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 16 (1): 56–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Peck, Amiena, and Christopher Stroud
2015 “Skinscapes.” Linguistic Landscape: An International Journal 1 (1–2): 127–145.Google Scholar
Pennycook, Alastair
2010 “Spatial Narrations: Graffscapes and City Souls.” In Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space, ed. by Adam Jaworski, and Crispin Thurlow, 137–150. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
2012 Language and Mobility: Unexpected Places. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Piller, Ingrid
2001 “Naturalisation, Language Testing and its Basis in Ideologies of National Identity and Citizenship.” International Journal of Bilingualism 5 (3): 259–277. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 “Sex in the City: On Making Space and Identity in Travel Spaces.” In Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space, ed. by Adam Jaworski, and Crispin Thurlow, 123–136. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Puar, Jasbir
2007 Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham: Duke University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reid, Graeme, and Teresa Dirsuweit
2002 “Understanding Systemic Violence.” Urban Forum 31 (3): 99–126. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Richardson, Diane
2000 “Constructing Sexual Citizenship: Theorizing Language Rights.” Critical Social Policy 20 (1): 105–135. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Said, Edward
1994 Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993. Reith Lectures. London: Vintage.Google Scholar
Shohamy, Elana
2006 Language Policy: Hidden Agendas New Directions. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shohamy, Elana, and Tim McNamara
(eds) 2009 “Language Tests for Citizenship, Immigration, and Asylum.” Special issue of Language Assessment Quarterly 6 (1): 1–111. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shohamy, Elana, Ben-Rafael, Eliezer, and Monica Barni
(eds) 2010 Linguistic Landscape in the City. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sobopha, Mgcineni
‘Pro’ 2005 “Body, Gender and the Politics of Representation.” Agenda 19 (63): 117–130.Google Scholar
Sontag, Susan
1977 On Photography. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Sparks, Holloway
1997 “Dissident Citizenship: Democratic Theory, Political Courage and Activist Women.” Hypatia 12 (4): 74–110. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stevenson, Patrick
2006 “ ‘National’ Languages in Transnational Contexts: Language, Migration and Citizenship in Germany and Austria.” In Language Ideologies, Policies and Practices: Language and the Future of Europe, ed. by Clare Mar-Molinero, and Patrick Stevenson, 147–161. Basingstoke, UK, Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stroud, Christopher, and Dmitri Jegels
2014 “Semiotic Landscapes and Mobile Narrations of Place: Performing the Local.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2281: 179–199. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stroud, Christopher, and Sibonile Mpendukana
2009 “Towards a Material Ethnography of Linguistic Landscape: Multilingualism, Mobility and Space in a South African Township.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 13 (3): 363–386. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thrift, Nigel
2004 “Intensities of Feeling: Towards a Spatial Politics of Affect.” Geografiska Annaler 86 (1): 57–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tucker, Andrew
2009 Queer Visibilities: Space, Identity, Interaction in Cape Town. Malden: Wiley Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Warner, Michael
1993 “Introduction.” In Fear of a Queer Planet, ed. by Michael Warner,vii–xliv. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Weeks, Jeffrey
1997 “The Delicate Web of Subversion, Community, Friendship and Love.” (Jeffrey Weeks in conversation with Sue Golding). In The Eigth Technologies of Otherness, ed. by Sue Golding, 320–333. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Zabrodskaja, Anastassia
2014 “Tallinn: Monolingual from Above Multilingual from Below.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2281: 105–130. DOI logoGoogle Scholar