Identities at the Intersection of Race, Gender , Sexuality and Class in A
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IDENTITIES AT THE INTERSECTION OF RACE, GENDER, SEXUALITY AND CLASS IN A LIBERALISING, DEMOCRATISING SOUTH AFRICA: THE RECONSTITUTION OF ‘THE AFRIKANER WOMAN’ By Town Christi van DEr WEsthuizEn Cape of ThEsis PrEsEntEd for thE DegrEE of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Universityin thE DEpartmEnt of Sociology UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN OctobEr 2013 The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgementTown of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Cape Published by the University ofof Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University In memory of Charmaine Maré († 10/1/2013, age 18), who couldn’t get away. Town Cape of University i ABSTRACT 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 Town 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. Cape The research further reveals how different of 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. University 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. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Undertaking and completing an intellectual project of this magnitude is intense and all- consuming, and was only possible due to the following people. Thank you to: The research participants, for sharing so richly and generously your experiences and wisdoms about complex times and places. My supervisor, Melissa Steyn, for intellectual support and insights, enthusiasm and that unflinching eye for centres of power. Your resonance with the project inspired me at vital moments. Ari Sitas, who stepped in with administrative support in the last year and did so with great humour and well-timed, anxiety-alleviating messages during Town the nail-biting examination period. Dear friends and family members for essential practical support and for alleviating long stretches of work work work with pithy messages. Cape Boksburg, for making me who I am. of And, always, Melanie Judge, without whose wit and acumen (and patience) the journey would be dull. Dedicated to Ouma Lien, who walked so far. University iii I don’t care if it hurts/ I want to have control/ I want a perfect body/ I want a perfect soul. – Radiohead, 1992 Town The soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body.Cape – Foucault, 1977 of University iv GLOSSARY Afrikaanse Christelike Vrouevereniging (ACVV) -- Afrikaans Christian Women’s Association Boere – Boers, referring to Dutch settlers Boerewors – ‘Boer sausage’ Broederbond – League of Brothers Dames Aktueel – Ladies Contemporary Jong Dames Dinamiek – Young Ladies Dynamic Junior Rapportryers – Junior Dispatch Riders Kragdadigheid – forcefulness Town Moeder - Mother Nasionale Vrouepartye (NVP) -- National Women’s Parties Cape Nederduits-Gereformeerde Kerk (NGK) -- Dutch Reformed Church of Oom – uncle (an older man, not necessarily related) Suid-Afrikaanse Vrouefederasie – South African Women’s Federation Tannie – auntie (an older woman, not necessarily related) Veglustigheid – combativeness University Verlig – enlightened/progressive Verkramp – reactionary/conservative Volk – people/nation Volksmoeder – mother of the nation Volksvreemde – alien to the people Vrou –woman and/or wife v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………………………................ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS…………………………………………………………...………………………...…….....iii GLOSSARY…………………………………………………………………………………………………………......v Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………….…………..…………........1 Chapter 2 THEORETICAL AND LITERARY POSITIONING……………………………………………………….…10 Chapter 3 METHODOLOGY………………………………………………………………………………………….…40Town Chapter 4 BE GOOD TO YOURSELF TO BE GOOD TO (WHITE) OTHERS: TECHNOLOGIES OF FEMININITY AND THE AFRIKAANS NEOLIBERAL SUBJECT……………………….…………………66 Cape Chapter 5 of ORDENTLIKHEID: FRAMING THE ORDER WITHIN AND WITHOUT ………………….……………102 Chapter 6 ORDENTLIKHEID’S ORDER WITHIN - PRODUCING AND POLICING THE INTERNAL OTHER……………………………………………………………………………………………………...120 Chapter 7 ORDENTLIKHEID’S ORDER WITHOUT University- PRODUCING AND POLICIN G THE EXTERNAL OTHER……………………………………………………………………………………………………...156 Chapter 8 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………………..........198 REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………………………......................218 APPENDICES……………………………………………………………………………………………….………245 vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background and problem identification After almost 350 years of Dutch, British and Boer colonialism and Afrikaner nationalist apartheid rule, the opening of the first democratic parliament of South Africa on 24 May 1994 featured an invitation – or, using the Althusserian (2008) term, an interpellation or hailing of subjects – which could be read as particularly compelling to South Africans who identify as ‘Afrikaner women’. African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, in his inaugural State of the Nation address as new South African president, quoted Afrikaans poet Ingrid Jonker (1933-1965). She had written a poem, titled ‘The child who was shot dead by soldiers at Nyanga’ (1963), about black resistance and humanity in the face of tightening apartheid state repression. Jonker was the daughter of a National Party senator who chaired the committee in Town charge of apartheid censorship. There was an attempted excision of the poem before its publication in her Rook en Oker [Smoke and Ochre] collection of poems (1963) and she suffered public humiliation at the hands of her father. Cape Jonker was writing against apartheid of at the time when Mandela was incarcerated for his activities in opposition to the regime of which her father was a part. The poem (Jonker, 2007:85) reads as follows: The child is not dead the child raises his fists against his mother who screams Africa screams the smell of freedom and heatherUniversity in the locations of the heart under siege The child raises his fists against his father in the march of the generations who scream Africa scream the smell of justice and blood in the streets of his armed pride The child is not dead 1 neither at Langa nor at Nyanga not at Orlando nor at Sharpeville nor at the police station in Philippi where he lies with a bullet in his head The child is the shadow of the soldiers on guard with guns saracens and batons the child is present at all meetings and legislations the child peeps through the windows of houses and into the hearts of mothers this child who just wanted to play in the sun at Nyanga is everywhere the child who became a man treks through all of Africa the child who became a giant travels through the whole world Without a pass It was a moment rich with meaning: a leader celebrated as the father of the freshly minted New South Africa speaking in an institution that embodied the fledgling democracy, welcoming an Afrikaner woman Town as belonging to the imagined nation after she had been expelled from the fold of the whites-only volk for recognising its black other. Mandela’s hailing was one of the many invocations of the democratic potentialities for subject positions located at the Cape intersections of femininity, whiteness, of heterosexuality and middleclassness. Mandela remembered Jonker on behalf of all in the country and