She's lost control again': representations of (dis)ability in contemporary performances of Spoek Mathambo and Die Antwoord

Abstract

This article compares the representation of disability in the performances of Spoek Mathambo and Die Antwoord, two contemporary South African musical artists. Both artists appropriate disability for their own purposes. However, I argue that Die Antwoord uses the economy of repulsion and desire that surround certain conceptions of disability to add credibility to their supposed marginalization as white South Africans in a post-apartheid nation. Spoek Mathambo, on the other hand, uses discourses of disability to think through the effects of violence on the body, as well as to demonstrate the esthetic similarities between epilepsy, spirit possession, and mediumship. I conclude with the centrality of vulnerability in formulations of subjectivity.