Abstract
The interlocking nature of race, class, gender and other social differentials in the construction of self for women has been well documented both in South Africa and abroad (e.g. Andersen & Collins, 2007; Mama, 1995). However, the ways in which these subject positions influence narratives involving oppression or historical trauma remain fluid, dynamic and open to interpretation (McEwan, 2003; Russell, 2008; Theidon, 2007). This chapter explores the intersecting dimensions of race and gender as influential axes in women’s narratives of everyday acts of racism in the Apartheid Archive Project (see Stevens, Duncan & Hook, in this volume).We argue that apartheid required those who lived under it to enforce, reproduce and experience it in supremely intimate, embodied and relational ways. Furthermore, we posit that, by virtue of hegemonic constructions of women as emotional and relational beings (Colley, 2003), they are inadvertently and ironically positioned to narrate the intimate, relational nature of apartheid in especially important ways due to their ‘social access’ to specific emotional and relational discourses. This focus on the manner in which the social world as context is psychologically experienced, understood, reproduced, contested and conveyed, is well synergised with the current resurgence and interest in psychosocial studies (see e.g. Frosh, 2011), and offers opportunities to critically engage with the construct and to expand this terrain of research.
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© 2013 LaKeasha G. Sullivan and Garth Stevens
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Sullivan, L.G., Stevens, G. (2013). Gendered Subjectivities and Relational References in Black Women’s Narratives of Apartheid Racism. In: Stevens, G., Duncan, N., Hook, D. (eds) Race, Memory and the Apartheid Archive. Studies in the Psychosocial. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137263902_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137263902_11
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