Browsing by Author "Wilhelm-Solomon, Matthew"

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Beneath These Saline Stars
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Wilhelm-Solomon, Matthew
A plague of drowning strikes an unnamed lakeside city. Hospitals are flooded with patients – primarily Black youth – who have died on soccer pitches, in their homes, and on the streets. A disgraced and divorced white journalist, now working on the arts pages of his newspaper, named Lüderitz Edward Leveza writes a profile on a performing artist and medical doctor, Isiwa: they are tattooed with black lightning, and walk as if on the point of falling. Isiwa is searching for the childhood song stolen from them when police arrested their mother—an activist against the former dictatorship—as a child. They provide Lüderitz information on deaths at the hospital where they work. Lüderitz’s investigation of the drownings takes him deeper into his past, his documentation of torture during the dictatorship, and his entanglement with Isiwa’s life. Together, Isiwa and Lüderitz see inexplicable visions in the city’s sky: men-of-war pass over his apartment block, a shoal of sardines weaves through the tower blocks, and whales arrive to mourn the dead. Isiwa leads an occupation of the city’s Freedom Square in protest against the deaths, but they are increasingly isolated and then arrested. Lüderitz is removed from his job and is mainly alone, punctured by Isiwa’s absence and left longing for them. During this time, he helps a young journalist called Zé in his investigations into the protests and drownings, which lead to a terrifying outcome. Beneath These Saline Stars is an aesthetic reworking of post-colonial journalistic realism and surrealism. It explores moral complicity with violence, loss and queer desire, rebellion and mourning, and the search for healing in a time of concatenated ecological, public health, and political catastrophes. A reflective essay follows the novel, in the form of crônicas – a Brazilian style of fragmentary essay. These explore diverse themes, both theoretical and personal, related to the context, influences and resonances of the novel: transatlantic literature and music; magical realism; créolité and postcolonial thought; Candomblé and climate change. The juxtaposition of these fragments aims to illuminate the personal, literary and political tides from which Beneath these Saline Stars took form.
Geek Culture and Art Therapy: Explorations of Gender Dysphoria Expressions
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Malatsi, Neville Modife; Mngomezulu, Nosipho; Wilhelm-Solomon, Matthew
Gender dysphoria is a psychologically distressing condition, which transgender people experience, as an incongruence between one’s natal sex and perceived gender identity. The standard medical reaffirmative interventions in treating gender dysphoria involve hormone replacement therapy, psychotherapy, and gender reassignment surgeries. However, not all transgender people choose to undergo medical reaffirmative treatments either because of inaccessibility to such treatments, lack of financial or informational sources, personal reasons, or the severe difficulties they experience in transitioning due to transphobia or discrimination. The purpose of this research report is to explore the creative ways transgender geeks employ to alleviate gender dysphoria and communicate lived experiences, especially when gender reassignment surgeries or hormone replacement therapy (HRT) are unavailable. These creative ways may involve tropes within the geek subculture such as avatars, or character creation that conforms with one’s perceived gender, and role-playing in online video games and virtual environments that allow one to express their gender. Other creative ways include art as therapy through painting, writing, or journaling, as well as dressing up as a means of expressing one’s gender identity. The theoretical framework that informs this study is phenomenology which helps appraise or analyse the lived experiences of the research participants. A key concept that has helped shape the research approach is surfaces and depths in considering how the trans body and trans art as texts are read and interpreted in relation to passing or transitioning. There are four emerging themes in the overall study which include: time/temporality, genres of textual hybridity, geek subculture and identity, and art as therapy. The data for this project was collected through ‘deep- hanging out’ as a method of observation, fieldnotes, and semi-structured interviews with two participants, Archer and Kahless, both of whom are white transgender men from different socioeconomic brackets and identify as geeks or creatives. Additionally, autoethnography has been included as part of polyvocality and reflexivity. The ethnography is multi-sited in the suburbs of Roodepoort and Randburg where my participants reside. The findings in the ethnographic text have shown that both participants primarily engage in creative arts as a means of self-expression and secondarily as a way of 7 alleviating or communicating gender dysphoria. Art, therefore, fulfils two purposes for my research participants: as a form of therapy and for creative expression.