Feminist aesthetics: Aspects of race, class and gender in the constitution of South African short fiction by women (original) (raw)

This essay focuses on the history of short stories by South African women of all races in an attempt to elucidate existing concepts pertaining to race, class and gender. It transpires that the first phase of modern feminist criticism was directed at exposing patriarchal tendencies prevalent in language and literature, while the second phase assessed the meaning and value of writing by women. The writer postulates that a perspective is imperative that both recognises and articulates intrinsic differentiation. Simultaneously, there should be an awareness of existing interrelationships allowing for different identities, divergent politics and dissimilar struggles. "Woman", per se, cannot be regarded as a stable identity because of diversification related to politics, culture and customs. The writer maintains that differences within ourselves have to be understood first before we can come to grips with differences inherent in others. Differentiation of identity is discussed with reference to three instances namely precolonial narrative art manifesting in historical documents, journals, letters, diaries and other forms. White Afrikaans-speaking women were, due to British imperialism, alienated from white English women and regarded as being superior to black South African women. This status quo was maintained until the fifties when black women began making themselves heard. Several examples of writing are cited leading to the conclusion that identity cannot be dealt with perfunctorily as it possesses both negative and positive facets to be explored by future feminist writers.