State-sanctioned corruption, repression, and violence shape Zimbabwe's past as well as present-day political-economic predicaments. Because of this situation, it is not uncommon for analysts to predict collapse for Zimbabwe. Such predictions have limited utility, and therefore, this article examines the micro-level activities of artistically inclined citizens that resist collapse and recast the terrain by maximizing the productivity of the city. The focus is on cultural activism – that is, arts-oriented engagements occurring beyond the boundaries of both state sponsorship and formally structured organizations. In Harare, the strength and influence surrounding artistic expressions rest in their abilities to inform and spark activism by focusing on lived realities as well as on the operations of the state conditioning those realities.
AlexanderJ. (2006). The unsettled land: State-making and the politics of land in Zimbabwe, 1893-2003.Oxford: James Currey Press; Harare: Weaver Press.
3.
AlexanderJ., & TendiB. (2008). A tale of two elections: Zimbabwe at the polls in 2008.Association of Concerned African Scholars, Bulletin80: Special Issue on Zimbabwe (II), pp. 5–17. Retrieved April 14, 2010, from http://concernedafricascholars.org/bulletin/80/
BatsellJ. (2005). AIDS, politics, and NGOs in Zimbabwe. In PattersonA. (Ed.), The African state and the AIDS crisis (pp. 59–78). Surrey: Ashgate Publishing.
6.
BeckerC. (2002). The artist as public intellectual. In BradfordG., GaryM., & WallachG. (Eds), The politics of culture: Policy perspectives for individuals, institutions, and communities (pp. 236–246). New York: New Press.
7.
BondP., & ManyanyaM. (2002). Zimbabwe's plunge: Exhausted nationalism, neoliberalism, and the struggle for social justice.London: Merlin Press.
8.
BooysenS. (2003). The dualities of contemporary Zimbabwean politics: Constitutionalism versus the law of power and the land, 1999-2002.African Studies Quarterly, 7 (2-3). Retrieved April 12, 2010, from http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v7/v7i2a1.htm
9.
BrackingS. (2005). Development denied: Autocratic militarism in post-election Zimbabwe.Review of African Political Economy, 32 (104-105), 341–357.
10.
BrattonM., & MasunungureE. (2008). Zimbabwe's long agony.Journal of Democracy, 19 (4), 41–55.
11.
ChrismanR. (Ed.). (2007). Special issue on Zimbabwe.Black Scholar, 37 (1).
12.
CollinsL. G. (2006). Activists who yearn for art that transforms: Parallels in the black arts and feminist art movements in the United States.Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 31 (3), 717–752.
13.
DawsonA., & EdwardsB. H. (2004). Introduction: Global cities of the South.Social Text, 22 (4), 1–7.
14.
DormanS. R. (2003). NGOs and the constitutional debate in Zimbabwe: From inclusion to exclusion.Journal of Southern African Studies, 29 (4), 845–863.
15.
HammarA. (2008). In the name of sovereignty: Displacement and state making in post-independence Zimbabwe.Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 26 (4), 417–434.
16.
HolstonJ. (2009). Insurgent citizenship in an era of global urban peripheries.City & Society, 21 (2), 245–267.
17.
JonesN. C. (1983). Acculturation and character portrayal in South African novels.African Literature Today, 13, 180–200.
18.
KabaA. (2009). Life expectancy, death rate, geography, and black people: A statistical worldview.Journal of Black Studies, 39 (3), 337–347.
19.
KagoroB. (2004). Constitutional reform as a social movement: A critical narrative of the constitution-making debate in Zimbabwe, 1997-2000. In RaftopoulosB., & SavageT. (Eds), Zimbabwe: Injustice and political reconciliation (pp. 236–256). Johannesburg: Institute for Justice and Reconciliation; Harare: Weaver Press.
20.
KamatS. (2004). The privatization of public interest: Theorizing NGO dis-courses in a neoliberal era.Review of International Political Economy, 11 (1), 155–176.
21.
KaufmanR. (2002). Aura, still.OctoberMagazine, 99, pp. 45–80.
KaufmanR. (2008). Lyric commodity critique, Benjamin Adorno Marx, Baudelaire Baudelaire Baudelaire.Modern Language Association Journal, 123 (1), 207–215.
24.
KrigerN. (2003). Guerilla veterans in post-war Zimbabwe.New York: Cambridge University Press.
25.
KrigerN. (2005). ZANU(PF) strategies in general elections, 1980-2000: Discourse and coercion.African Affairs, 104 (414): 1–34.
26.
KwendaS. (2009). In the shadow of Mugabe.Index on Censorship, 38, 103–109.
27.
LaaksoL. (2002). The politics of international election observation: The case of Zimbabwe in 2000.Journal of Modern African Studies, 40 (3), 437–464.
28.
LeVanC. (2011). Power sharing and inclusive politics in Africa's uncertain democracies.Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, 24 (1), 31–53.
29.
LewisD. (2002). Civil society in African contexts: Reflections on the usefulness of a concept.Development and Change, 33 (4), 569–586.
30.
MakumbeJ. (2002). Zimbabwe's hijacked election.Journal of Democracy, 13 (4), 87–101.
31.
MbembeA. (1991). Power and obscenity in the post-colonial period: The case of Cameroon. In ManorJ. (Ed.), Rethinking Third World politics (pp. 166–182). London: Longman Press.
32.
MbembeA. (2001) On the postcolony.Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
33.
MbembeA., & NutallS. (2004). Writing the world from an African metropolis.Public Culture, 16 (3), 347–372.
34.
McLoughlinT. O. (1984). Black writing in English from Zimbabwe. In GilmanG. D. (Ed.), The writing of East and Central Africa (pp. 100–120). London: Heinemann.
35.
MehlerA. (2009). Peace and power sharing in Africa: A not so obvious relationship.African Affairs, 108 (432), 453–473.
36.
MungoshiC. (1975a). Ndiko Kupindana Kwamazuva (How time passes). Gwero: Mambo Press.
37.
MungoshiC. (1975b). Waiting for the rain.London: Heinemann.
Ndlovu-GatsheniS. J. (2007). Conflict, violence and crisis in Zimbabwe. In MatlosaK., ElklitJ., & ChiroroB. (Eds), Challenges of conflict, democracy and development in Africa (pp. 306–329). Johannesburg: Electoral Institute of Southern Africa.
40.
NolanS. (2008, November 10). Lewis reaches out to women raped for supporting Zimbabwe's opposition. The Globe and Mail (Canada). Retrieved April 12, 2010, from http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID=19657
41.
PietrzykS. (2009). Artistic activities and cultural activism as responses to HIV/AIDS in Harare, Zimbabwe.African Journal of AIDS Research, 8 (4), 481–490.
42.
PrimoracR. (2006). The place of tears: The novel and politics in modern Zimbabwe.London & New York: Tauris Academic Studies.
43.
PrimoracR. (2007). The poetics of state terror in twenty-first century Zimbabwe.Interventions, 9(3), 434–450.
44.
PrimoracR., & MupondeR. (2005). Introduction: Writing against blindness. In PrimoracR., & MupondeR. (Eds), Versions of Zimbabwe: New approaches to literature and culture (pp. xiii–xxii). Harare: Weaver Press.
45.
RaftopoulosB. (2000). The state, NGOs, and democratisation. In MoyoS., MakumbeJ., & RaftopoulosB. (Eds), NGOs, the state, and politics in Zimbabwe (pp. 21–46). Harare: SAPES Books.
46.
RaftopoulosB., & EppelS. (2008). Desperately seeking sanity: What prospects for a new beginning in Zimbabwe.Journal in Eastern African Studies, 2 (3), 369–400.
47.
RangerT. (2004). Nationalist historiography, patriotic history and the history of the nation: The struggle over the past in Zimbabwe.Journal of Southern African Studies, 30 (2), 213–233.
48.
RodriguezD. (2007). The political logic of the non-profit industrial complex. In Incite! Women of Color against Violence (Ed.), The revolution will not be funded: Beyond the non-profit industrial complex (pp. 21–40). Cambridge: South End Press.
49.
SaidE. (1994). Representations of the intellectual: The 1993 Reith lectures.New York: Pantheon Books.
50.
SimoneA. M. (2008). Emergency democracy and the “governing composite.”Social Text, 95(26), 13–33.
51.
StrattonF. (1984). Charles Mungoshi's waiting for the rain.Zambezia, 13(1), 11–24.
52.
SusserI. (2009). AIDS, sex, and culture: Global politics and survival in Southern Africa.West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
53.
TagwiraV. (2006). The uncertainty of hope.Harare: Weaver Press.
54.
TurshenM. (1999). Privatizing health services in Africa.New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
55.
VambeM. (2005). History and the ideology of narrative in Charles Mungoshi's Ndiko Kupindana Kwamazuva (1975).Journal of African Cultural Studies, 17 (2), 219–234.
56.
van de WalleN. (2001). African economies and the politics of permanent crisis, 1979-1999.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
57.
YúdiceG. (2001). Parlaying culture into social justice.Social Text, 69 (4), 53–65.
58.
ZimunyaM. B. (1982). Those years of drought and hunger.Gwero: Mambo Press.
