11:00 - 12:30
Room: Poynting – Lecture Theatre S06
Stream: The Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies stream
Popular culture, new femininities and subjectivities: reading Nairobi Diaries
Dina Ligaga
University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, Johannesburg

Nairobi Diaries is a television reality show that follows the lives of seven Nairobi based ‘socialites’ in Kenya. Among the all-female cast is popular video ‘vixen’ and entrepreneur, Vera Sidika. The show also features other less well known women, who nonetheless showcase themselves as fashion-forward, classy, global subjects. This is indicated in the way they dress, what they purchase, how they look and even how they speak. In many ways, the show appears to mimic others produced in the global North such as The Real Housewives franchise. However, as Arjun Appadurai (1995), Joyce Nyairo (2004), Stephanie Newell (2000) and others have variously noted, what appears to be mimicry is often complex in its connections with local cultures. In this paper, I consider the hypervisibility of the female subject against a competing discourse of morality through which femininity is read in Kenya. Hypervisibility is both a way of proclaiming presence; but also a way of reading the women as global subjects in a neoliberal world. I focus on the first season of Nairobi Diaries which aired from December 2015. Importantly, while the show is a television show, I analyse the archived videos of the show on YouTube, and take into account a different public addressed through the show. Through a narrative, visual and discourse analysis of the kinds of femininities showcased in the show, I hope to make an argument for agency; while recognizing the location of these women as global, neoliberal subjects.


Reference:
Th-A43 Eastern Africa 5-P-001
Presenter/s:
Dina Ligaga
Presentation type:
Panel
Room:
Poynting – Lecture Theatre S06
Date:
Thursday, 13 September
Time:
11:00 - 11:15
Session times:
11:00 - 12:30