Affective Politics and Colonial Heritage:Rhodes Must Fall at UCT and Oxford

In: Knudsen , B T & Andersen , C 2018 , ' Affective Politics and Colonial Heritage : Rhodes Must Fall at UCT and Oxford ' , International Journal of Heritage Studies , vol. 25 , no. 3 , pp. 239-258 . https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2018.1481134

Abstract

The article analyses the spatial entanglement of colonial heritage struggles through a study of the Rhodes Must Fall student movement at the University of Cape Town and the University of Oxford. We explore affective politics and the role heritage can play in the landscape of body politics. We aim to shed light over why statues still matter and we argue that affective politics – defined as politics that engage bodies immediately – is due to site-specific actions capable of going viral but likewise to non-photogenic scenes with indexical power. The decolonizing activism of the RMF movement mobilizes around the controversial heritage associated with Cecil Rhodes at both places – a heritage that includes statues, buildings, Rhodes scholarship and the Rhodes Trust funds. The article analyzes the cultural repertoires put to use in both locations and shows how political mobilization happens in the two cases. We look at how the spatial connectivity established by the heritage-centered strategy of the RMF in Oxford and Cape Town replicates and challenges the connectivity and power-geometries that was created by Rhodes and his followers during the colonial era. Only in SA did the repertoire fledge out what we call an affective politics using bodies as main tool.