"Zones of indistinction" and visions of post-reconciliation South Africa in District 9. Issue 1 (2nd January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Akpome, Aghogho
• Is Part Of: Safundi. Volume 18:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 85
• Page End: 97
• Publication Date: 2017-01-02
• Subjects: "Zones of indistinction" -- "states of exception" -- South Africa -- post-reconciliation -- District 9; South Africa -- History -- Periodicals; United States -- History -- Periodicals; 968
• DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2016.1249167
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1753-3171

Abstract

Abstract: In this article, I explore the ways in which District 9 reflects South Africa's current socio-political transition through the problematical representation of the film's eponymous slum and its impoverished inhabitants as well as its protagonist, Wikus van der Merwe. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben's influential ideas of biopolitics, I demonstrate the ways in which the film provides a compelling critique of the effects of neoliberal capitalism on post-apartheid transition and South Africa's complex geopolitical landscape. In this regard, I analyze how the slum figures as a "zone of indistinction" where political and economic forces combine to produce the paradoxical conditions in which impoverished South Africans are included in a democratic social contract, but are simultaneously excluded from the socioeconomic benefits that it promises.