Whiteness as a spectre in space? The case of Post-Apartheid Cape Town

South Africa continues to be a country where racial segregation is more often the rule than the exception, with Cape Town ranking among its most racially segregated cities. The city is also frequently associated with Whiteness. Yet what is Whiteness? Where is it located, how can it be observed, and how does it manifest spatially? This talk examines Whiteness as an ideology that is both produced through space and inscribed within it - an ideology that operates on a global scale and simultaneously shapes and is shaped by political subjectivities. Focusing on the context of Post-Apartheid Cape Town, the analysis draws on Derrida’s concept of the spectre (Derrida 1993) to explore Whiteness as both a ghostly presence and a spectrum. It further considers how Whiteness haunts spatial formations and how, in turn, it is haunted by the colonial past in Post-Apartheid Cape Town.

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Speaker

Danielle Isler is a social scientist from Zurich and is currently completing her doctorate at the University of Bayreuth on “Black Subjectivities and Whitened Spaces in Post-Apartheid Cape Town.” She has taught as a lecturer at, among others, the University of Basel, the University of Bern, the University of Zurich, the Bern University of Applied Sciences, the University of Cape Town, and Humboldt University in Berlin. Alongside her academic work, Danielle Isler is active in anti-racism education: she facilitates workshops, delivers lectures, and provides consulting services to promote greater inclusion and social equity in society. She is also a curator, artist, and musician.

About TESS

This event is part of the Thinking Expansively Seminar Series (TESS). TESS offers ways of thinking that start from elsewhere/margins in a way that unsettles and reconfigures knowledge. It starts from beyond the canon. Thinking Expansively redefines how we approach knowledge, pushing us to imagine and realise a more equitable and inhabitable world. TESS is an interdisciplinary series hosted by GCSJ at the Open University.