Bringing together critical race, queer and decolonial analytical approaches, visual analysis, and multimodal discourse analysis, this book explores the discursive strategies deployed by African luxury brands in an age of cross-platform, intertextual branding.
Building on literature examining the aesthetics and politics of African luxury, this book demonstrates how leading African luxury brands create visual material speaking to complex sensibilities of culture, nature, and future. Iqani shows how powerful brand narratives and strategies reveal ethical and ideological messages that function to re-position Africa in an increasingly congested global marketplace of ideas. In acknowledging that there is a strong political validity to recognizing the importance of African brands staking their claim in luxury, this book also problematizes the role these brands play in the promotion of luxury discourses, advancing the project of capitalism and their contribution to broader patterns of inequality.
Shedding new light not only on luxury branding strategies but also on the idea of a luxurious global “Africanicity” and on the complex cultural politics of South Africa, African Luxury Branding will be of interest to advanced students and researchers in disciplines, including Critical Advertising Studies, African Studies, Media and Communications.
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
1. African Luxury Brands in Global and Local Context
2. From Africa to the World: Cultural Inheritance as Soft Power
3. Back to Nature: Beauty and African Luxury Minimalism
4. Shiny Futures and Afro-Fabulous Queer Luxury
5. From Soft Power to Queer Futures: New Directions for African Luxury
6. Appendix 1: Details on Interviews
7. Bibliography
Biography
Mehita Iqani is the South African Research Chair in Science Communication at Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
