[Commlist] New book: "District 9": Johannesburg as Nostalgic Dystopia

"/District 9/: Johannesburg as nostalgic dystopia" (De Gruyter Brill 
2025), by Landi Raubenheimer.

The film /District 9/ made waves as an allegory of apartheid on the big 
screen, but it has not yet been given its rightful place as a landmark 
depiction within broader visual cultural studies of Johannesburg and 
cities in the Global South.
In this book, Landi Raubenheimer argues that /District 9/’s portrayal of 
Johannesburg reverberates within a larger body of representations of the 
city, collectively shaping a unique visual ‘idiom’ for the 
post-apartheid city as nostalgic dystopia. In addition to work by 
documentary photographers such as David Goldblatt and Santu Mofokeng, 
the films /Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema/ (2008) by Ralph Ziman, /The 
Battle for Johannesburg/ (2010) by Rehad Desai and the short film 
/Berea/ (2013) by Vincent Moloi are investigated to lay bare the 
Johannesburg idiom across lens-based depictions of the city. The book is 
an interrogation of how nostalgic dystopia works in /District 9/ and 
beyond, questioning how it constructs a nostalgic landscape through 
media nostalgia and post-apartheid nostalgia, and how it deploys 
Johannesburg itself as a site of attraction and repulsion.
Delving deeply into /District 9/, Raubenheimer brings to light the 
fascination that images of the city as nostalgic dystopia has held for 
filmmakers, photographers, viewers, and lovers of Johannesburg alike.

ISSN 1572-3070
ISBN 978-90-04-52543-6 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-71095-5 (e-book)
DOI 10.1163/9789004710955
https://brill.com/display/title/63435 
<https://brill.com/display/title/63435>

About the author:

Landi Raubenheimer is an academic and artist living in Johannesburg. She 
has published articles on South African film, photography and art in 
international journals and teaches at the Faculty of Art, Design and 
Architecture at the University of Johannesburg.

Contact: (landir /at/ uj.ac.za)

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