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Woza! Sweetheart! On braiding epistemologies on Bree Street.

Authors :
Matsipa, Mpho
Source :
Thesis Eleven. Aug2017, Vol. 141 Issue 1, p31-48. 18p.
Publication Year :
2017

Abstract

African hair braiding on Bree Street offers a glimpse into how immigration, black female sexuality and shifts in urban retail economies provide important economic and cultural resources to urban residents and users. As both ontology and epistemology, black hair braiding practices recalibrate local economies, spaces, and aesthetic codes, and thus co-constitute emergent urban identities and a way of knowing the city. The intimate, networked, and fractal nature of black hair braiding spaces disrupts the rigid colonial spatial orders of the city and its architecture. As an epistemology, braiding disrupts the grand narrative of Johannesburg in ‘crisis’, while also disrupting the colonizing and gendered structure of urban studies itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
07255136
Volume :
141
Issue :
1
Database :
Academic Search Index
Journal :
Thesis Eleven
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
124649554
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513617720241