Making space for India in post-apartheid South Africa: Narrating diasporic subjectivities through classical song and dance

Background/purpose Diasporic associations and hometown groups fuel transnational exchanges and circulations. Their role has mostly been understood in terms of broader calculative agendas related to ethnic and national cultural politics. In South Africa, classical Indian singers, dancers and instrumentalists are an important part of these transnational landscapes. This paper focuses on the individual actors giving shape to these flows, and explores how a range of subjectivities is entangled with the materialities and forces present in classical performance spaces. Methods and results Drawing on fieldwork in Durban, South Africa, it explores how, and why organising actors assemble the matter of classical performance spaces. The paper also explores interconnections to Bollywood as another emergent diasporic site both in tension and accord with classical Indian performances. Conclusion Drawing from a feminist social practice approach, this paper argues that diaspora associational life is assembled through agents negotiating different gaps and discrepancies arising from the material and affective inhabitation of diasporic worlds.