‘You Say “Performance Poet”, I Hear “Dance Nigger, Dance”’: Problematizing the Notion of Performance Poetry in South Africa

This article analyzes how the notions of what counts as ‘performance poetry’ and who counts as a ‘performance poet’ differ according to context, and its focus lies on how these terms are postulated and disseminated within the South African literary scene. It offers an analysis of circumstantial factors within the South African literary community, which is explored as a site of epistemic violence. This epistemic violence unfolds through the racial micro-invalidations which are produced each time academia and media use the terms ‘performance poet’ and ‘performance poetry’ in relation to black poets and their work, without being aware of the negative implications of this. This pernicious ignorance is exposed and addressed, and so too is the conceptual system underscoring an approach that sees poetry as synonymous with the written word and which privileges the written over the oral, thereby relegating ‘performance poetry’ to an indefinite space, existing somewhere outside the national written traditions.