Isler, Danielle Audrey
Research Interests:
Critical Race Studies, Critical Whiteness Studies, Citizenship Studies, African Studies, Urban Anthropology, Anthropology of Global Inequalities, Border Studies, Racism and Racialization, Pigmentocracy, Decolonization, Intersectionality, Trauma, Memory, and Embodiment
Geographical Area:
South Africa, Brazil, Switzerland, Germany
Current Project:
Black Subjectivities and Whitened Spaces in Cape Town, South Africa – Constructions, In/Compatibilities, and Reactions to Exclusions
Although apartheid is officially over, racialized segregation remains the norm rather than the exception in South Africa, where Cape Town is one of the most segregated cities and a "city of exclusion" for many PoC. An implicit assumption persists that the city belongs to "Whites" and that Blacks are "temporary sojourners" whose place is in the townships.
In her doctoral project, which is situated between the fields of Spatial Studies, Critical Race Studies, Critical Whiteness Studies, and Citizenship Studies, Danielle explores racialized spaces and in particular Whitened spaces. Merging ethnography and autoethnography, she examines how Whitened spaces are constructed and upheld, how people excluded from Whitened spaces react to this exclusion, and how spatial formations shape Black subjectivities and vice versa in Cape Town.
To understand the complex topic of spaces and positionalities in this urban environment, she asks the following questions:
1) How are racialized spaces de/constructed and how do they produce exclusions?
2) How do people excluded from (Whitened) spaces respond to such exclusions?
3) How are Black people’s subjectivities produced, challenged, transformed, in relations to racialized spaces?
Further information (CV and conference contributions)