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Cross-Epistemological Feminist Conversations Between Indigenous Canada and South Africa

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Cross-Epistemological Feminist Conversations Between Indigenous Canada and South Africa CROSS-EPISTEMOLOGICAL FEMINIST CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN INDIGENOUS CANADA AND SOUTH AFRICA CROSS-EPISTEMOLOGICAL FEMINIST CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN INDIGENOUS CANADA AND SOUTH AFRICA By JESSIE WANYEKI FORSYTH, B.A., M.A. A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy McMaster University © Copyright by Jessie Wanyeki Forsyth, September 2015 McMaster University DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (2015) Hamilton, Ontario (English) TITLE: Cross-Epistemological Feminist Conversations Between Indigenous Canada and South Africa AUTHOR: Jessie Wanyeki Forsyth, Ph.D. (McMaster) SUPERVISOR: Professor Helene Strauss NUMBER OF PAGES: viii, 293 ii LAY ABSTRACT This project examines a small selection of the literatures by Indigenous women writers in Canada and black South African women writers to conceptualize anti-oppressive approaches to working across differences in both literary/scholarly and activist/lived contexts. It uses conversation as a critical methodology for engaging four primary texts and practicing an uneasy comparative method based on horizontal forms of juxtaposition rather than vertical relations of evaluative power: Mother to Mother (Sindiwe Magona) and The Book of Jessica (Maria Campbell and Linda Griffiths); and Coconut (Kopano Matlwa) and Monkey Beach (Eden Robinson). The overall aim is to re-imagine forms of engaging across difference along a range of registers – racialization, gender, nation, class, language, and geographical location – that create conditions for more expansive and substantive forms of social justice than are currently visible. The project draws on feminist, Indigenous, postcolonial, critical race, and related areas of scholarship with an orientation towards social justice. iii ABSTRACT This is a project that takes inequality as its starting point to ask not why it persists in all its myriad forms, but rather how we might better understand its resiliency in order to re- orient our responses. It asks how we can re-imagine one another and work across asymmetrical divides in ways that move us towards substantial forms of social justice, actively disallowing the entrenchment of hierarchical valuing systems, and how we can engage with literature as part of reconfiguring ‘equality’ in the process. These questions are traced through Indigenous women’s literatures in Canada and black South African women’s literatures as sites of deeply textured resistance and re-imagined relationality. My analysis focuses on select texts from the 1980s to present in two primary archives: from Indigenous Canada, The Book of Jessica: A Theatrical Transformation (Maria Campbell in collaboration with Linda Griffiths) and Monkey Beach (Eden Robinson); and from South Africa, Mother to Mother (Sindiwe Magona) and Coconut (Kopano Matlwa). I use conversation as my methodological and thematic compass for seeking modes of enabling comprehension across perniciously unequal systems of making meaning and considering the possibilities for transformative knowledge production and textual interpretation at sites of unequal intersubjective exchange. I employ an uneasy comparative practice that I base on horizontal forms of juxtaposition within conversational structures, and I argue that conversation’s generative instability and risky uncertainty open onto hopeful possibilities for transformative change. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I gratefully acknowledge the Indigenous peoples on whose unceded traditional Mississauga and Hodinohso:ni territory I sit, mindful that I am an uninvited guest. I sincerely thank my committee: Helene Strauss, Daniel Coleman, and Nadine Attewell. Your continually supportive and incisive guidance and your unfailing encouragement has been an incredible anchor. I’m deeply grateful for all I’ve learned with you. Thank you. I just as sincerely thank a long list of family and friends who have made this project – and its completion – possible in countless known and unknown ways: Vickie Forsyth, Chris Mason, Charlie Jack, Emily Forsyth, Ian Forsyth, Jessica Forsyth, Anne Foryth, Sarah Forsyth, Rachel Forsyth, Laura Forsyth, Hetty Flock, Celso Mabjaia, Puxa Mabjaia, Dina Mabjaia, Vovó Isabel, Margaret Wanyeki, Muthoni Wanyeki, Ian Wanyeki, Natasha Elva, Steven Wanyeki, Mary Forsyth, Donna Murray, Menemsha Mason, Haven Mason, Jeremy Mason, Sharlee Cranston-Reimer, Kerry Cranston-Reimer, Su Tardif, Taowa Munene-Tardif, Areej Siddiqui, Malissa Phung, Sandra Isaacs Muse, Phanuel Antwi, Fiona Sillars, Nilou Ahmedzadeh, Lockslyn Clarke, Harvey Asiedu-Akrofi, Beekaa Abraham, Amber Dean, Katja Lee, Michelle Peek, Mary O’Connor, Melinda Gough, Dana Mount, Anabela Mate, Simone Doctors, Esmè Joaquim, Regina Fernando, Maria da Conceição Nhate, Barb Murray, Bianca James, Antoinette Somo, Chiraz Agrebi, France Desjardins and Michele Frechétte, Jane Springer and Greg Keast, Gerri Dickson and Murray Dickson, António Tanda, Don Kossick and Denise Kouri, Jan Mendes, Jaspreet, v Sandhu, Jesse Arseneault, Sarah D’Adamo, Kaitlin Debicki, Meaghan Debicki, Karen Busche, Kathy Zachos, Martha Kariuki, Meaghan Ross, Stacey Downing, Cheryl McDonald, Kassandra Lake-Bork, Tania Belluz, Lisa Kabesh, datejie green, Marie- Hélène Bonin, and many others. I also gratefully acknowledge the support of SSHRC for undertaking this research. And finally, to Filimone Mabjaia and Xiluva Olinda Forsyth-Mabjaia: there are no words. Muitíssima obrigada pela esperança que vocês trazem e para o mundo que vocês criam. Estarão sempre no meu coração. A luta contínua. In loving memory of John Forsyth, Winnie Wanyeki, and Jim Bryce. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Cross-Epistemological Feminist Conversations Between Indigenous Canada and South Africa p. 1: Introduction/ Chapter 1: Why Conversation? Why Change?: Articulating Across Archives p. 1: Intro Why Change? p. 10: Part I Why Conversation? p. 25: Part II Uneasy Comparative Learning p. 28: Part III Change What? p. 45: Part IV Co-Articulating Archives p. 49: IV.i Contextual Contours p. 59: IV.ii Feminisms’ Unanalagous Crossings p. 69: Part IV Conversive Maps p. 72: Chapter 2: In Conflict, In Conversation: Mother to Mother and The Book of Jessica on Place, Property, and Justice p. 72: Intro Located Dissonance p. 80: Part I Placing Conversational Dissonance: Mother to Mother p. 82: I.i Structuring Place p. 88: I.ii Mapping (Dis)Placements p. 98: I.iii (Dis)Located Safety p. 108: Part II Parsing Property Failures: The Book of Jessica p. 116: II.i Contractual Property? p. 127: II.ii Ideological Property? Epistemological Trade? p. 134: II.iii Processes and Accented Intent p. 143: II.iv Sibyl Trouble p. 149: Part III Dissonance Read Otherwise: Transformative Potential? p. 150: III.i The Book of Jessica and Witnessing p. 159: III.ii Mother to Mother and Critical Kinship vii p. 167: Chapter 3: Conversations at Work: Fiercely Recursive Knowings in Coconut and Monkey Beach p. 167: Intro Coming of Age, to Know, Across, Around p. 174: Part I The Scholarly Conversations: Reading Distances p. 191: Part II Conversations in the Texts: Combative Losses, Recursive Knowings p. 193: II.i Coconut: Ofilwe’s Privilege Slippage p. 203: II.ii Coconut: Fikile, Willed p. 219: II.iii Monkey Beach: Reading Loss Sideways p. 230: Part III Conversation Turned Outwards: Responsive Pedagogy, Generative Genealogy p. 232: III.i Monkey Beach: Lisa as Pedagogue p. 238: III.ii Monkey Beach: Indigenous Knowings, Temporal Mappings p. 252: III.iii Coconut: Genealogical Praxes p. 265: Conclusion: Reverberations; or, Adjacent Change p. 271: Bibliography viii Ph.D. Thesis – J. Forsyth; McMaster University – English and Cultural Studies Introduction/ Chapter One: Why Conversation? Why Change?: Articulating Across Archives “My voice is for those who need to hear some truth. It has been a long time since I had an intimate conversation with my own people . If you do not find yourselves spoken to, it is not because I intend rudeness – you just don’t concern me now.” (Maracle, I Am Woman 10) “I could hear the clattering of his leg chains as he awkwardly steadied himself, extending his hand to greet me. He spoke in a heavy Afrikaans accent: ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’ . The embodiment of evil stood there politely smiling at me.” (Gobodo-Madikizela 5-6) “Everything was as we imagined it. The earth and stars, every crea- ture and leaf imagined with us. The imagining needs praise as does any living thing. Stories and songs are evidence of this praise. The imagination conversely illumines us, speaks with us, sings with us. Stories and songs are like humans who when they laugh are indestructible. No story or song will translate the full impact of falling, or the in- verse power of rising up. Of rising up.” (Harjo lines 15-25) Intro Why Change? This is a project that takes inequality as its starting point to ask not why it persists in all its myriad forms, but rather how we might better understand its resiliency in order to re-orient our responses. The project’s anchor, as such, is the coincident fact of resistance – also various and ongoing, mutable and resilient – and its difficult articulations. How are inequalities resisted and what factors condition the response? Who is able to resist what? Where? When and with whom? And how, most importantly, does resistance register? Context immediately shapes understanding, as do the modes of 1 Ph.D. Thesis – J. Forsyth; McMaster University – English and Cultural Studies encounter and address, and disentangling one from the others holds no guarantees. It is with each of these broad
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