Power, desire and emotions in education: revisiting the epistolary narratives of three women in apartheid South Africa

Abstract

In this paper I will attempt to consider emotions in the context of three women’s lives, whose passion for education brought them together and then tore them apart along axes of difference defined by race, class and age in apartheid South Africa. I am looking in particular into the correspondence between Lily Moya, Mabel Palmer, and Sibusisiwe Makhanya, published in 1987 by Shula Marks and having since become an almost canonical reading in the ‘intersectionality’ literature. In revisiting this correspondence, I am exploring how culturally differentiated emotions, as inscribed in the three women’s epistolary narratives, can open up spaces for the subject of feminism to emerge. In this context, what I suggest is that reclaiming emotions within current educational discourses and practices can have significant effects not only on how lives are shaped and subjectivities formed, but also on how we can rethink about what feminism is and what it can do.

Acknowledgements

My interest in this correspondence was stirred by a series of most useful discussions I had with colleagues and now friends at the Psychology Department of the University of KwaZulu‐Natal, where I was a visiting scholar in October 2003 as part of a research exchange programme between the University of East London and the University of KwaZulu‐Natal. I am particularly thankful to Lindy Wibraham for our ongoing discussions on cross‐cultural understandings of Foucault’s work and for immediately responding to my pleas for help regarding the correspondence. In presenting a previous version of this paper at the Fifth International Gender and Education Conference on Gender, Power and Difference at Cardiff University in March 2005, I had the chance to test my ideas in a wider audience. I am lucky to have received a series of inspiring comments that have made me dig deeper in my though. In writing the final version of this paper, I have benefited from my two anonymous reviewers and the editors’ comments. I am thankful to all of them. Finally I want to thank Shula Marks for responding to my request and offering me invaluable information about her work with the manuscripts.

Notes

1. As Shula Marks notes, Lily Moya is a pseudonym (1987, pp. xiii, 42) which was attributed to the young Xhosa woman of the correspondence according to the request of her family (Marks, personal communication).

2. Although the publication of this correspondence is indicated as ‘edited’ by Shula Marks, it is important to note here that the letters have been published en masse (Marks, 2005, personal communication), as they were found in the file ‘Lily Moya’ amongst the papers of Dr Palmer, ‘Palmer Mabel/Papers, 1908–1951’ in the Killie Campbell Africana Library, University of KwaZulu‐Natal, Durban, where they are still housed. As Shula Marks notes, in transcribing the letters ‘I have retained the original spelling, punctuation and usage in the correspondence’, adding that ‘I have inserted corrections or explanations in the notes only where there is a danger of non‐comprehension or confusion’ (1987, p. 44). Apart from the book, Marks has published two papers on the correspondence (Marks, 1989, 2000). The discussion of my paper totally relies on Mark’s (1987) publication of the correspondence in its entirety. I am grateful to Shula Marks for responding to my request for clarification.

3. The term intersectionality was coined in 1994 by Kimberle Crenshaw to capture systems of interlocking inequalities. Going beyond the gender aspects of racial discrimination, intersectionality sheds lights on the multiplicity and complexity of ways in which gender, race and class but also other axes of identity difference create the conditions of possibility for discrimination and abuse (see Crenshaw, 1995). However the history of the concept goes back much further and has been of critical importance to the theory and praxis of Black feminism. It is in this context that I have placed Mark’s influential publication in what has now been identified as the ‘intersectionality literature’.

4. For analyses and discussions of letters and correspondences in sociological research, see Jolly (1997), Barton and Hall (1999), the special issue of the Journal of European Studies on ‘Lives and letters’ edited by Montefiore and Hallet in 2002, and Stanley (2004).

5. I want to thank Kari Dehli whose insightful comment made me reflect on this limitation in the discussion of an earlier version of this paper at the Fifth International Gender and Education Conference at the University of Cardiff in March 2005.

6. This correspondence, dated between 1949 and 1951 is actually placed in the initial period of the enactment of apartheid laws in 1948, when racial discrimination and segregation was officially institutionalized. The formal legal framework of this initial period included the ‘Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act’ in 1949 and the ‘Population Registration Act’, the ‘Suppression of Communism Act’ and the ‘Group Areas Act’ in 1950 and were followed by more Acts later on. These race laws touched every aspect of social life, including a prohibition of marriage and sex between non‐Whites and Whites, the sanctioning of ‘White‐only’ jobs, the requirement that all South Africans be racially classified into one of three categories: White, Black (African), or coloured (of mixed decent). Finally strict spatial segregations and mobility restrictions were imposed. Affluent city and areas were assigned to Whites, while non‐Whites were banished into the townships. The Separate Amenities Act in 1953 created, among other things, separate beaches, buses, hospitals, schools and even park benches, while the Bantu Education Act (1953) brought in various measures to reduce the education attainable by Black people to the level of training for low level manual jobs. The previous regimes of pass books were strengthened and all Blacks and coloureds were required to carry identity documents containing fingerprints, photo and information at all times. Access to non‐Black areas, was strictly prohibited without specific permission even for short‐term visits. It goes without saying that non‐compliance with the race laws were dealt with harshly. Clearly the apartheid is the central theme marking the twentieth century history of South Africa (1948–1994) and it has been theorized and discussed from a wide variety of perspectives. For a critical historical overview of the apartheid system, see amongst others Worger and Clark (2004) and Worden and Lee (2000).

7. Conatus, as the power of striving to persevere in being is a fundamental concept in the philosophy of Spinoza. For an illuminated discussion of Spinoza’s ethics, see Lloyd (1996).

8. ‘Deterritorialization’, ‘reterritorialization’ and ‘lines of flight’ are critical notions in Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy in their influential work capitalism and schizophrenia (1984, 1988). For a discussion of these concepts in relation to emotional learning, see Tamboukou (2003c).

9. In Difference and repetition (2004), Deleuze—himself perceived as a philosopher of difference par excellence—charts this philosophical line of thinking.

10. According to Foucault (2005, p. 14), the Cartesian moment qualifies the primacy of the imperative to ‘know yourself’ in the modern world, while in the antiquity it was assumed that the need to take care of oneself, created the need to know yourself, there was a subordination of knowledge to care.

11. For a discussion of ‘technologies of the female self in education’ see Tamboukou (2003b), particularly chapter 5.

12. Marks offers an illuminating commentary on Adam’s College history and the structures that turned out to become hostile and indeed exclusive for Lily (1987, pp. 19–30).