“Zones of indistinction” and visions of post-reconciliation South Africa in District 9

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.

Keywords:

• “Zones of indistinction”
• “states of exception”
• South Africa
• post-reconciliation
• District 9

Notes

¹ See Van der Vlies, “District 9.”

² Heller-Nicholas, “From District Six to District 9,” 137.

³ Helgesson, “Global South,” 172, 173.

⁴ Moses, “Strange Ride,” 156. See also Veracini, “District 9 and Avatar.”

⁵ See Walder, “Hysterical Nostalgia” and Goodman, “Allegory.”

⁶ See Graham, “Amakwerekwere.”

⁷ Helgesson, “Global South,” 172.

⁸ Moses, “Strange Ride,”158.

⁹ Agamben, Homo Sacer.

¹⁰ See Akpome, “Towards a Reconceptualization.” I use the term “post-TRC” to refer to the cultural and political contexts dominated by varying responses to the Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC).

¹¹ Nel, “Repugnant Appeal.”

¹² Nel, “Repugnant Appeal,” 547.

¹³ Ibid., 551.

¹⁴ Ibid.

¹⁵ Akpome, “Changing Face,” 26.

¹⁶ Harrison et al., Changing Face, 2.

¹⁷ Ibid., 12.

¹⁸ Exhaustive accounts of writing on Johannesburg is outside the scope of this study. A useful and fairly comprehensive account is provided by Harrison et al.

¹⁹ Mbembe and Nuttall, “Introduction: Acropolis,” 1.

²⁰ Ibid.

²¹ Ibid., 3.

²² Ibid., 5.

²³ Nel, “Repugnant Appeal,” 552.

²⁴ Gaylard, “Parktown Prawns,” 168.

²⁵ Smith, “Soweto Residents,” n.p.

²⁶ Comaroff and Comaroff, Theory from the South.

²⁷ Blomkamp returns to similar visions of the world and of Johannesburg more specifically in his other films, Elysium and Chappie released in 2013 and 2015, respectively. Set in Johannesburg with scenes in the iconic Ponte City building and slums, Chappie echoes the brutality of gangsterism and martial law enforcement that feature powerfully in District 9.

²⁸ Agamben, Homo Sacer, 10, 12.

²⁹ Carter and Dodds, International Politics and Space, 44.

³⁰ Ibid., 59. Although they make passing reference to District 9, Carter and Dodds’s primary focus is on Rendition, The Siege and Iron Man released in 2007, 1998, and 2008, respectively.

³¹ Smith, Globalization, Utopia and Postcolonial Science Fiction, 128.

³² Ibid., 158.

³³ Agamben, Homo Sacer, 71.

³⁴ This is in addition to the hospital and prison which Foucault discusses at length in The History of Sexuality. See also Schinkel and van den Berg, “City of Exception”; Calvo, “The Visitor”; Linke, “Mobile Imaginaries, Portable Signs” and Simone, “South African Urbanism.”

³⁵ See Butler, Precarious Life; Lemke, “A Zone of Indistinction” and Deuber-Mankowsky, Diehl and Coles, “Cutting off Mediation.”

³⁶ Biehl, Vita.

³⁷ Ibid., 2.

³⁸ Di Muzio, “Governing Global Slums,” 305.

³⁹ Agamben, Homo Sacer, 69.

⁴⁰ Di Muzio, “Governing Global Slums,” 307, emphasis added.

⁴¹ See Smith, “Soweto Residents.”

⁴² See the relevant opening section of the article on the ways in which depictions of Johannesburg often serve in both metonymic and metaphoric ways for South Africa as a whole.

⁴³ See Neocosmos, Foreign Natives.

⁴⁴ Helgesson, “Global South,” 173.

⁴⁵ Ibid.

⁴⁶ See Ellapen, “Cinematic Township” and Parker, “Images and Influence.”

⁴⁷ Quayson, “Unthinkable Nigeriana,” n.p.

⁴⁸ Ibid.

⁴⁹ George, “The Africans,” n.p.

⁵⁰ Nel, “Repugnant Appeal,” 552.

⁵¹ See Harrison et al., Changing Space.

⁵² Ibid., 4. Gauteng Province which comprises Johannesburg, Pretoria, and a host of peripheral towns and informal settlements accounted for 39.3% of the increase in national population between 1996 and 2011.

⁵³ See Moore, “The Civic Protest Barometer.” There were 218 public protests in 2014 compared to 27 in 1996. Eighty percent of the protests that took place in 2014 turned violent and over half of the protests in that year took place in the country’s five largest cities.

⁵⁴ South Africa’s constitution is hailed as one of the most progressive in the world. It has in its preamble, a statement inherited from the Freedom Charter of 1950: “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity” (see Constitution).

⁵⁵ Frenkel and MacKenzie, “Conceptualizing,” 3.

⁵⁶ Ibid.

⁵⁷ Parker, “Images and Influence,” 166, 167.

⁵⁸ Heller-Nicholas, “From District Six to District 9.”

⁵⁹ Mbembe, “Rule of Property,” n.p.

⁶⁰ Agamben, Homo Sacer, 12, 13.

⁶¹ Ibid., emphasis added.

⁶² See note 31.

⁶³ Dawson and Edwards, “Introduction,” 5, 6.

⁶⁴ Smith, Globalization, Utopia and Postcolonial Science Fiction, 128, 149.

⁶⁵ Ibid.