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Abstract
In the context of the hashtag movement #ThisFlag, this paper examines the sensual affects drawn from flag symbolism and why the Zimbabwean flag is policed by the state. It uses the symbolism and politics of the hashtag movements by focusing on Evan Mawarires national lament and the Zimbabwean flag. It employs a literary and discursive analysis of Mawarires lament using desktop research on the contestations surrounding the flag. It shows that in dominant nationalist discourses, the flag is imaged as the land/nation and feminised to warrant it utmost respect, protection, sanctity and re/productive capacity. On the other hand, the #ThisFlag has made use of the flag to resist and subvert grand and naturalised dominant discourses of nationalism and citizenship to foster new imagi/nations of the nation. The use of the flag by the movement provoked ZANU-PFs ownership of the national flag, which is quite similar to and has been drawn from the flag of the party, hence the movement was challenging the identity of the party, its ownership and its relevance. The paper shows the fluidity of symbols and symbolic meanings and why #ThisFlag had symbolic radical power and the possibilities of using the states and ZANU-PFs cultural tools to challenge ZANU-PFs hold on national knowledge and power. It contributes to our understanding of both state-power retention and how subaltern voices can uncover the agency of subjects within the very instruments of control incessantly used by dominant regimes.
Keywords: flag symbolism; hashtag movements; gendered imaginations; performing nation; subject surveillance; social media
1.In Memory of the School Head Boy
Mondays were the most fascinating at Mavedzenge Primary, a rural school in Shurugwi, Zimbabwe where I partly did primary education in the late 1980s. We assembled to mark the week's beginning and we all partook in the expected school rituals. Edmore was the tallest, strongest and eldest pupil, and was also an example of discipline. As head boy, he had the responsibility of hoisting and lowering the national flag. Considering the colossal importance attached to it, some of us wished to feel it, but we were too defiled to touch the sacred cloth and were left only to watch it from a distance and sensualise its feel.
The head boy's uprightness, seriousness and attentiveness during...