Popular culture, discourse and divergent identities: reconstructing South Africa as an African state

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Abstract
How do state elites discursively popularize official representations of world politics and the state's location within it? If the broad public holds contrasting, or at least more sceptical, views, how can these gradually be supplanted or even ultimately obfuscated? Drawing on the role of narratives, this article underlines the significance of popular culture in relation to the construction of national identity. Reviewing a series of events in the realm of major sports events and celebrity achievements, I illustrate the way in which state elites appropriate these ‘spectacles’ to reconstruct South Africa's African identity (despite a considerable degree of ambivalence amongst the broad public). However, central to this process of recreation stands a narrative of exceptionalism that becomes instrumental to not only instil national pride but also sustain a discourse of South Africa being the exemplar of African modernity.

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