'This shit is political; shit is real.' The politics of sanitation, protest, and the neoliberal, post-apartheid city. Issue 1 (2nd January 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Baxter, Veronica; Mtshali, Mbongeni N.
• Is Part Of: Studies in theatre and performance. Volume 40:Issue 1(2020)
• Page Start: 70
• Page End: 82
• Publication Date: 2020-01-02
• Subjects: Performance -- protest -- township -- abjection -- neoliberalism -- South Africa; Drama -- Periodicals; Theater -- Periodicals; Performing arts -- Periodicals; Acting -- Periodicals; Drama; Performing arts; Theater; Periodicals; 792.05
• DOI: 10.1080/14682761.2019.1689755
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1468-2761

Abstract

ABSTRACT: In this article, the authors discuss the use of shit in a series of protests between 2011 and 2017 in the City of Cape Town, South Africa. They specifically interrogate with how these protests mobilised the abject body as a tactical site of political performance, and employ performance as an organising metaphor and conceptual language for interrogating the politics and implications of the act of throwing shit as a tool of protest. In addition, they consider the modes of activism implicit in a 'politics of shit', and compare a case study from India with that of Khayelitsha in South Africa in order to engage with Steven Robins' understanding of 'slow activism' and the 'politics of the ordinary' as more sustainable and generative models of resistance to neoliberal statehood.