Christi van der Westhuizen | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (original) (raw)

Books by Christi van der Westhuizen

At the opening of South Africa’s first democratic parliament in 1994, newly elected president Nel... more At the opening of South Africa’s first democratic parliament in 1994, newly elected president Nelson Mandela issued a clarion call to an unlikely group: white Afrikaans women, who during apartheid occupied the ambivalent position of being both oppressor and oppressed. He conjured the memory of poet Ingrid Jonker as ‘an Afrikaner and an African’ who ‘instructs that our endeavours must be about... liberation'. More than two decades later, the question is: how have white Afrikaans-speaking women responded to the emancipating possibilities of constitutional democracy? With Afrikaner nationalism in disrepair, and official apartheid in demise, have they re-imagined themselves in opposition to colonial ideas of race, gender, sexuality and class? Sitting Pretty explores this postapartheid identity through the concepts of ordentlikheid, as an ethnic form of respectability, and the volksmoeder, or mother of the nation, as enduring icon. Issues of intersectionality, space, emotion and masculinity are also investigated.
The book can be purchased on Loot.co.za at http://www.loot.co.za/product/christi-van-der-westhuizen-sitting-pretty/bddp-5020-g510?referrer=bookslive
It will be available on Amazon from Jan 2018 at https://www.amazon.com/Sitting-Pretty-Afrikaans-Postapartheid-Africa/dp/1869143760

Midrand: Institute for Global Dialogue.

Papers by Christi van der Westhuizen

The Intersections of Whiteness

The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Race and Gender, 2022

This handbook offers a unique decolonial take on the field of Critical Whiteness Studies by re-hi... more This handbook offers a unique decolonial take on the field of Critical Whiteness Studies by re-historicising and re-spatialising the study of bodies and identities in the world system of coloniality. Situating the critical study of whiteness as a core intellectual pillar in a broadly-based project for racial and social justice, the volume understands whiteness as elaborated in global coloniality through epistemology, ideology and governmentality at the intersections with heteropatriarchy and capitalism. The diverse contributions present Black and other racially diverse scholarship as crucial to the field. The focus of inquiry is expanded beyond Northern Anglophone contexts to challenge centre/margin relations, examining whiteness in the Caribbean, South Africa and the African continent, Asia, the Middle East as well as in the USA, Scandinavia and parts of Europe. Providing a transdisciplinary approach and addressing debates about knowledges, black and white subjectivities and newly defensive forms of whiteness, as seen in the rise of the Radical Right, the handbook deepens our understanding of power, place and culture in coloniality. This book will be an invaluable resource for researchers, advanced students and scholars in the fields of Education, History, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Political Sciences, Philosophy, Critical Race Theory, Feminist and Gender Studies, Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies, Security Studies, Migration Studies, Media Studies, Indigenous Studies, Cultural Studies, Critical Diversity Studies, and African, Latin American, Asian, American, British and European Studies. For reviews and contents see & pre order https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Critical-Studies-in-Whiteness/Hunter-Westhuizen/p/book/9780367403799

Violence: South African Perspectives, 2021

This dissertation explores the extent to which the postapartheid democratic space in South Africa... more This dissertation explores the extent to which the postapartheid democratic space in South Africa has allowed for the emergence of new identities for Afrikaans women-beyond the normative Afrikaner nationalist volksmoeder [mother of the nation] ideal. The study interrogates Afrikaner subjectivities through the interpretive lens of ordentlikheid-an ethnicised respectability-at the intersections of gender, sexuality, class and race. Framed by the theoretical perspectives of Laclau and Mouffe, Foucault, and Butler, the study employs discourse analysis across three phases: Firstly, an analysis of Sarie women's magazine, as an instrument of a culturally-sanctioned, normative discourse; secondly, an analysis of texts generated in focus group interviews with subjects who self-identify as women, white, heterosexual, middle-class and Afrikaans-speaking; and thirdly, an analysis of texts from individual in-depth interviews. The interviews and focus groups were conducted with participants from Johannesburg and Cape Town to allow for the emergence of possible regional differences. The study finds that 'the Afrikaner' has not been rendered invalid as an identity, rather, it has become open to different interpretations that draw on both democratic discourses and on apartheid notions of race, gender, sexuality and class. The research further reveals how different discourses compete for the same subject position, which can result in a subject shifting between contradictory identificatory stances. Democratic discourses of feminism, equality and justice are used to reject 'the Afrikaner' identity as too closely associated with apartheid iniquities. Democratic conceptions are mobilised to re-imagine 'the Afrikaner' and remember the volksmoeder as 'strong woman', in order to arrive at feminist notions of female autonomy, while problematising heteronormativity and bourgeois whiteness. In contrast, subjects identify with 'the Afrikaner' to deny the effects of racism and sexism and to resist democratic ideas. Discourses persist that reproduce normative volksmoeder ordentlikheid through femininity as silence, self-sacrifice, servility, sexual accessibility and reproducing whiteness. This femininity is invested in the restoration of Afrikaner hegemonic masculinity. Neoliberalism and postfeminism renew normative volksmoeder elements, while global-local spatial strategies allow subjects to withdraw into hegemonic whiteness or marked white enclaves. The result is that Afrikaans women's postapartheid identities derive from many volksmoeders, rather than simply one.

Tydskrif Vir Letterkunde, 2017

Book Title: Hitler, Verwoerd, Mandela and Me Book Author: Marianne Thamm Kaapstad: Tafelberg, 2... more Book Title: Hitler, Verwoerd, Mandela and Me Book Author: Marianne Thamm Kaapstad: Tafelberg, 2016. 248 pp. ISBN: 9780624075202 (druk); ISBN: 9780624075219 (e-pub).

The information on women workers is based on interviews with 50 women in the

Agenda, 2005

This reportback critically reflects on the findings of a conference held in Johannesburg to inter... more This reportback critically reflects on the findings of a conference held in Johannesburg to interrogate the actualisation of women's agency and equality in Africa.

Whiteness Afrikaans Afrikaners: Addressing Post-Apartheid Legacies, Privileges and Burdens, 2018

How is space in South Africa’s democracy being carved by and for women and men who do not conform... more How is space in South Africa’s democracy being carved by and for women and men who do not conform to gender ideas inherited from apartheid? Dr Christi van der Westhuizen, feminist, author, award-winning political columnist and research associate with the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice, University of the Free State, engages with Dr Zethu Matebeni, activist, author, filmmaker, curator and researcher on black female sexualities and genders at The Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape Town. They talk about current upheavals in South Africa’s sexual and gender relations, as especially lesbians, but also young heterosexual women present alternatives and challenges to patriarchal norms. These alternatives and challenges have provoked a backlash against women who refuse to be bound by conventional and restrictive gender norms, whether through their dress code or conduct. The speakers also consider the implications of the current wave of moralism and the use and abuse of gender in the national political debate

Routledge Handbook of Critical Studies in Whiteness, 2021

Violent and Vulnerable Performances: Challenging the Gender Boundaries of Masculinities and Femininities, 2013

Gender under Construction, 2018

In South Africa, the race-class debate had dominated thinking in the social sciences for most of ... more In South Africa, the race-class debate had dominated thinking in the social sciences for most of a century. Since the 1990s, the collusion of gender with other categories in the South African postcolonial context has been problematised. Manicom 1 argued for a theoretical shift to a poststructuralist focus away from the TXHVWLRQV RI µZKR UXOHV DQG ZK\ ¶ RI WKH UDFH-class debate to questioning modes of political subjection, in particular through normative gender meanings. Drawing on /DFODX DQG 0RXIIH ¶V GLVFRXUVH WKHRU\ 2 this chapter explores (dis)continuities in identifications in postapartheid South Africa. The focus is on the extent to which the expanded postapartheid democratic space has allowed for the emergence of a new imaginary for the production of subjectivities beyond the normative Afrikaner nationalist volksmoeder (mother of the nation) ideal. The volksmoeder signifier served as a QRGDO SRLQW SULYLOHJHG VLJQLILHU IRU WKH SURGXFWLRQ RI DQ µ$IULNDQHU IHPLQLQLW\ ¶ IURP WKH ULVH RI $IULNDQHU QDWLRQDOLVP V-1940s) and throughout official apartheid (1948-1994), reinforced by the idealised constructions of middleclass respectability DQG DQ HWKQLFLVHG µUDFLDO SXULW\ ¶ 3 The chapter shows that elements of the volksmoeder have been re-sutured by globalised discourses of the post-feminist, neo-liberal subject. 4 Traces of volksmoeder femininity persist in the efforts at the rehabilitation of an ethnicised whiteness in relation to hegemonic whiteness. 5

Midrand: Institute for Global Dialogue.

The Intersections of Whiteness

The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Race and Gender, 2022

Violence: South African Perspectives, 2021

Tydskrif Vir Letterkunde, 2017

The information on women workers is based on interviews with 50 women in the

Agenda, 2005

Whiteness Afrikaans Afrikaners: Addressing Post-Apartheid Legacies, Privileges and Burdens, 2018

Routledge Handbook of Critical Studies in Whiteness, 2021

Violent and Vulnerable Performances: Challenging the Gender Boundaries of Masculinities and Femininities, 2013

Gender under Construction, 2018

a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 2020

Abstract This article explores the shifts in (in)visibility of one of the few “leftist” female Af... more Abstract This article explores the shifts in (in)visibility of one of the few “leftist” female Afrikaner public intellectuals in twentieth-century South Africa. The Afrikaner nationalist embrace of Dr. Petronella “Nell” van Heerden (1887–1975), the country’s first woman gynecologist, soon turned into marginalization, showing the limits of colonial white dissidence.

Matatu, 2020

In the South African War (1899–1902), Boer women emerged as more heroic than their men folk. When... more In the South African War (1899–1902), Boer women emerged as more heroic than their men folk. When Boer leaders succumbed to a truce, much discursive work ensued to domesticate Boer women anew in the face of their recalcitrance in accepting a peace deal with the British. But attempts to re-feminise Boer women and elevate Boer men to their ‘rightful’ position as patriarchs faltered in the topsy-turvy after the war. The figure of the volksmoeder, or mother of the nation, provided a nodal category that combined feminine care for the family and the volk, or fledgling Afrikaner nation, but the heroic narrative was increasingly displaced by the symbol of self-sacrificial, silent and passive motherhood, thereby obscuring women’s political activism. Today, a re-remembering of volksmoeder heroism, combined with feminist politics based on the democratic-era Constitution, opens up possibilities of Afrikaners breaking out of their white exclusivism to join the nascent democratic South African na...

Tydskrif vir Letterkunde, 2017

Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa, 2019

Critical Philosophy of Race, 2016

In South Africa, race has been subverted by the fall of official apartheid. Specifically, the “in... more In South Africa, race has been subverted by the fall of official apartheid. Specifically, the “invisibilization” of black others is overturned and white-black relationality problematized, thereby deeply troubling whiteness. However, the logic of race continues to reverberate through social relations against a global backdrop in which this category proves remarkably adaptable as purveyor of inequality. The end of official apartheid is not the end of the power effects of the apartheid discourse. The postapartheid field is a site of contestation over previously normalized hierarchies, including over gender and class. Applying a discourse analysis to texts generated in research interviews with respondents who self-identified as women, white, Afrikaans-speaking, and middle class, this study finds attempts at re-securing race. First, the strategy of “elision and misattribution” seeks to recuperate apartheid's racial binaries to bolster present-day whiteness. Second, “intersectional sh...

Critical assessment of survey data, read against qualitative research, to critique whiteness in p... more Critical assessment of survey data, read against qualitative research, to critique whiteness in postapartheid South Africa.

Das Ende des repräsentativen Staates? Demokratie am Scheideweg / The End of the Representative State? Democracy at the Crossroads (Eds.: H Botha, N Schaks & D Steiger)

A significant drop in voter participation in the space of a mere two decades suggests that the re... more A significant drop in voter participation in the space of a mere two decades suggests that the representative model of democracy is in trouble in South Africa. To make sense of this trouble, this chapter explores the potential and the possibilities of different meanings of democracy in South Africa, as proposed by the representative and deliberative models, before considering Mouffe’s conceptualisation of a radical democratic practice that approaches democracy as a ‘conflictual consensus’. The chapter starts with a look at the insufficiencies of representative democracy and their causal relationship to political disaffection. The point of departure is to avoid the hierarchisation of democracies which positions African democracies as perversions of the ideal, Western form. Rather, democracy is approached as nowhere completely achieved – neither in Africa, nor in the West – which explains the inherent democratic deficit that representative democracy historically suffers from. The discussion then moves to the extent to which deliberative democracy provides a panacea to that which ails representative democracy. Thereafter recent developments in South Africa are sketched, pertaining to diminishing voter participation and increasing social protects. The simultaneity of these phenomena is analysed as signalling institutional disaffection, rather than political disengagement, as the ruling African National Congress (ANC) wields majoritarianism and proceduralism to weaken institutions and thereby avert accountability. It is argued that the deliberative democratic features of the parliamentary system are rendered ineffectual due to the ANC’s political project. The politics pursued by the ANC is due in part to the stubborn colonial and apartheid legacies of socio-economic inequality and deprivation, and in part to the vanguardist political culture of the party, both of which effects are bolstered by a prevailing neoliberal rationality. The rise of the Economic Freedom Fighters is then critically examined as a radical democratic challenge to the procedural strictures of representative democracy, particularly through a reactivation of parliament as political space. In conclusion, it is argued that reading democracy as a conflictual consensus is more productive than the models of representative or deliberative democracy in understanding South African democracy at this historical juncture.

Chapter in Webster, E, and Von Holdt, K, (2005). Beyond the Apartheid Workplace - Studies in Tran... more Chapter in Webster, E, and Von Holdt, K, (2005). Beyond the Apartheid Workplace - Studies in Transition. Scottsville: UKZN Press.

Chapter in Du Toit, F., and Doxtader, E. (eds.), (2010). In the Balance. South Africans Debate Re... more Chapter in Du Toit, F., and Doxtader, E. (eds.), (2010). In the Balance. South Africans Debate Reconciliation. Cape Town: Institute for Justice and Reconciliation

Gender performativity, its variances depending on their historical, social and cultural contexts,... more Gender performativity, its variances depending on their historical, social and cultural contexts, and the rituals, representations and institutions involved in gender performances are some of the issues the authors addressed in this collection. Gender under Construction takes a non-essentialist view of gender and provides illustrative examples of gender constructive processes by pursuing them in various contexts and by means of diverse methodologies. In so doing, the book demonstrates that it is unfeasible to consider gender as a fixed biological trait. Instead, the authors propose to look at gender performance as ongoing ongoing processes in which femininities and masculinities enter multiple and dynamic intersections with a myriad of categories, including those of nationality, ethnicity, class, sexuality and age.