Gender and "History": 1980s South African Women's Stories in English (original) (raw)
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.
Journal of Literary Studies, 1993
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of identity is discussed with reference to three instances namely precolonial narrative art manifesting in historical documents, journals, letters, diaries and other forms.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.
Twentieth-Century South African Women's Memoir as Historiography
African Studies, 2023
While historians of twentieth-century South Africa have made use of women's memoirs as an archive, this article argues that these memoirs can also be regarded as historiography. In Ruth First's 117 Days (1965), Ellen Kuzwayo's Call Me Woman (1985), and Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life: A South African Autobiography by Emma Mashinini (1989), authors critique and reconstitute narratives of the South African past, told through the lives of politically engaged women. They present versions of South African history that not only act as a corrective to the apartheid state-sanctioned narrative of South African history as white supremacist triumph, but also probe the limits of the histories narrated by liberation movements.
'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.
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 ...
HERstory: Writing women into South African history
Agenda, 2014
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Zimbabwe women writers from 1950 to the present : re-creating gender images
2016
Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2016.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: My thesis focuses on Zimbabwean women as writers and thus on women as producers, contesters and negotiators of gendered images, and the ways in which they write gender identities in and of the nation. I have selected Zimbabwean women-authored texts written in English, from 1950 to 2015. The fictional texts are set in five historical periods – pre-colonial and colonial incursions and the first chimurenga (war) from 1890-1897, colonial rule from 1898-1966, the second chimurenga 1966-1978, independence and the first two decades of self-rule from 1980-1999, and the third chimurenga? and the Zimbabwe crisis from 2000 to the present – each of which is marked by important gender (re)configurations. My delineation of the five historical periods refers to the setting, not production, of the primary texts. The periodization approach makes evident the significant shifts in gender relations and roles in the home and the nation, and t...