Feminist aesthetics: Aspects of race, class and gender in the constitution of South African short fiction by women (original) (raw)
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Gender and "History": 1980s South African Women's Stories in English
Ariel-a Review of International English Literature, 1996
It's very important for tuomen to write what they feel. Really, toe need more writing from women. I think women understand each other better when they are alone together than when there's a man around because then there is always the possibility of pretending and that's not communication. . . . So we should come together as women and try to do some creative uniting—I mean writing that will help or encourage other people who might become our fellowwriters in the future.
Narrating (her)story : South African women’s life writing (1854-1948)
2015
By submitting this thesis, I declare that the entirety of the work contained therein is my own, original work, that I am the sole author thereof (save to the extent explicitly otherwise stated), that reproduction and publication thereof by Stellenbosch University will not infringe any third party rights and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it for obtaining any qualification.
This article examines creative agency in the lives of four black South African women writers during South African apartheid: Miriam Tlali, Lauretta Ngcobo, Gladys Thomas, and Sindiwe Magona. Drawing theoretically on Mamphela Ramphele's conceptualizations of space, it analyzes life review interviews with these writers, who were among the first black women to publish novels and poetry in apartheid South Africa, about the ways in which they came to understand themselves as writers and creative subjects within a political system that severely curtailed their political and creative expression. It considers agency a key tool for understanding how these authors transcended their received identities as laborers and reproducers of labor for the apartheid nation, to become authors of their own lives and works. In elucidating how writing increased personal agency for these writers, the article posits the concept of creative re-visioning -a subject's ability to re-envision what is possible for her to achieve beyond received expectations for her life. It theorizes such creative re-visioning as a strategy of resistance during apartheid and an additional dimension to feminist conceptualizations of human agency.
The main aim of the book is to find possible answers to the dilemma of Western society how to state one's socio-cultural identity in an other way than based on the hierarchical opposition self - the other. Furthermore the book attempts to explore how literary characters in contemporary postcolonial works in Dutch and Afrikaans deal with the altered binary system and what solutions do they offer to us, the readers. Based on a close-reading analysis of a research corpus of a number of contemporary postcolonial works by female authors from the Netherlands and South Africa, the analysis concentrates on the ways how their literary female characters search, resp. find their identity in the postcolonial situation. teh emphasis lies on the changing concept of 'women' and 'femininity' connected with th female body and motherhood, i.e. those aspects of the 'female experience' that have been silenced and/or backgrounded in the majority colonial (patriarchal) discourse. Keywords: feminist literary theory, postcolonialism, women writers, identity, Dutch literature, Afrikaans literature
The twenty-first century has seen a dramatic increase in the amount of poetry being written and published by South African women writers. Unfortunately, this has not been matched by a corresponding increase in critical responses. This article attempts to address this situation through a discussion of the linguistic themes and strategies found in South African women’s poetry, seen within the artistic and socio-political context of post-apartheid South Africa. Nevertheless, South African women poets use poetry as a vehicle for defining identities within the contested postcolonial space. They also write in protest against their silencing by patriarchy and by colonial forces. They frequently use language to overcome the gendered binary opposition between private and public utterance. Finally, women poets engage productively with cultural, ethnic and gender difference. While it is not possible exhaustively to define the ways in which South African women poets use language, the article identifies significant trends and concerns in this area.
South African female subjectivity (1868-1977): life writing, the agentive "I" and recovering stories
2019
Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch Univesity, 2019.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This dissertation investigates the formation of white female subjectivity in the life writing of three South African women, penned between 1868 and 1977. The subjects are: Betty Molteno (1852-1927), Hettie Smit (1908-1973) and Joyce Waring (1914-2003). I consider subjectivity formation as contingent on geo-cultural, historical, ethnic and socio-political contexts, as well as cultural and political markers of identity such as race, gender and ethnicity. My analysis of Molteno’s journals, letters, autobiographical poetry and life writing about her, Smit’s letters and autobiographical fiction titled Sy kom met die Sekelmaan [She appears with the Sickle Moon] (1937), and Waring’s trilogy of autobiographical texts I’m no Lady (1956), Sticks and Stones (1969) and Hot Air (1977) indicate these three women’s subjectivities as embodied and formed relationally. However, differences in their respective constituted subjectivities and ...
In: Boehmer, Elleke & De Mul, Sarah (eds.) 2012. The Postcolonial Low Countries. Literature, Colonialism, Multiculturalism. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books: 139-162 , 2012
Afrikaans women's writing was one of the marginal discourses in Afrikaans literature that however, for all its marginality, played an important part in interrogating the structures of power in South Africa during the apartheid era. As such, Afrikaans women's writing formed part of Afrikaans literature's history of resistance and dissidence which grew especially strong after 1960, as political repression, too, grew stronger. 1 Using broad and over-simplified strokes, one can paint early Afrikaans literature as largely nationalist. On the one hand it could be seen a postcolonial literature, resisting colonial oppression by the British; on the other hand it could be regarded as a colonial literature, co-opted culturally to reinforce an Afrikaner nationalism which itself continued the colonial oppression of the past.
'A Clearing in the Bush': Teaching South African Women's Writing
Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 2001
This essay takes its title from a short story by Zoe , so as to begin to locate and nd a way of expressing the experiences of reading, discussing and teaching a selection of South African women's writing to student groups in the UK. This paper looks speci cally at teaching South African women's writing on a 'Black and Asian women's writing'module, with some reference to other classes in which South African women's writing has been part of this study. In doing so, post-colonial and feminist critical practices are usefully integrated with the learning theories of phenomenography and experiential learning in order to better explore the developing learning experience. From where we are located, it has been important to nd our own voices with which to articulate our responses to these texts. Our own locus of experience, our 'clearing in the bush' is something we have grown gradually to recognize and identify. It is hoped that we have been learning to appreciate the writings available to us without translating them into the discourse of the colonial, nor lling them up with our own particular meanings and the interpretations of a white feminist criticism. The post-colonial imaginary, and the discourses available to us have meshed with our own experiences as students and teacher, learners and readers in the process.