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language. Drawing insights from Saldanha's materialist theory of race, I have argued
that motility is a particularly instructive prism through which to demonstrate the mater-
iality of whiteness for a particular, though representative, set of white English-speaking
South Africans. Transnational motility, I have argued, is not merely an epiphenomen-
on of lingering white privilege in post-apartheid South Africa, but is embedded within
the white South African body through its material origins, at a variety of temporal and
spatial scales, in ancestral histories of migration. Through what I call the visa whiteness
machine, motility is an immanent but unequally distributed property of South African
whiteness, located in the body by nature of that body's relation to ancestry. I have ar-
guedthatmotilityisasetofcapacitiesthatareunevenlydistributed,evenamongstwhite
South Africans. Many white South Africans are eligible for UK passports, many more
for ancestral visas, and those who aren't could participate in the working holiday visa
scheme. I have also argued that motility, as a property, can move between bodies and
change scales. Through recent European citizenship law, South African holders of other
EU passports have gained the right to move to the UK and other EU states. Meanwhile,
those in possession of white motility can choose to share it and pass it on to officially
recognized family members.
Allthesame,IamkeentobeclearthatIamnotpursuinganeither-orapproachtothe
debate around race and social construction, but am more interested in an approach best
characterized as both-and. Thus I am keen to emphasize that the transnational motility
embedded in white bodies involves only capacities that are mobilized and activated by
discourses, cultural norms, and the material circumstances of everyday life and in par-
ticular emerges as a means of reconciling the possession of a white body with its em-
placementinpostcolonial,newlythirdworldspace.Notonlydoestransnationalmotility
demonstratethematerialityofwhiteness,but,Iwouldsuggest,itispartoftheveryonto-
logy of South African whiteness itself, as it emerges machanically out of the movement
of white bodies through transnational space.
References
Ahmed, S. 2007. “The Phenomenology of Whiteness.”
Feminist Theory
8(2): 149-68.
Ballard,R.2004a.“Assimilation,Emigration,Semigration,andIntegration:'White'People'sStrategies
for Finding a Comfort Zone in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” In:
Under Construction: “Race” and
Identity in South Africa Today
, edited by N. Distiller and M. Steyn, 51-66. Sandton, SA: Heine-
mann.
———. 2004b. “Middle Class Neighbourhoods or 'African Kraals'? The Impact of Informal Settle-
ments and Vagrants on Post-Apartheid White Identity.”
Urban Forum
15 (1): 48-73.
Bonnett, A. 2000.
White Identities: Historical and International Perspectives
. Harlow, UK: Prentice-
Hall.
