What is Blackwom?nhood: An intersectional dialogue with the Young Wom?n’s Leadership Project¹

1. The Young Wom?n’s Leadership Project (YWL) is an action research project that aims to create safer spaces for wom?n students to engage in questions of sexuality, sexual boundaries and violence through sexual and reproductive health rights peer-education initiatives.

abstract

In this open forum piece we bring together our lived experiences and intersectional identities as young Black women to make sense of the question: What is Blackwom?nhood? We explore a variety of topics ranging from identity, feminist activism, the environment, and decoloniality by focusing on the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, location, and language. The gendered and racialised identities given to Black women by culture and society greatly impact on their ability to produce knowledge and live a pleasurable life in the home, university, and, particularly, the workplace. In acknowledging that Blackwom?nhood is not a singular experience, this paper explores the multiple ways that women of colour choose to represent themselves in a world dominated by a racist, capitalist, patriarchal system. This piece is a provocation of thoughts on Black women’s representation, expression and sexual exploration, and the possibilities it has for producing critical feminist theories. In the current age of decoloniality, the question of what Blackwom?nhood is and means becomes increasingly important in understanding Black women’s role in activism, academia, and the workplace. We attempt to (re)imagine and (re)configure how Blackwom?nhood has resisted and evolved despite reductionist definitions and tropes.

keywords:

• Blackwom?nhood
• intersectionality
• decoloniality
• feminist activism
• representation

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr Fatima Seedat, our ‘academic mother’, for homing us and affirming our ideas and writing – we salute you! We thank the YWL University of Cape Town (UCT) team and staff at AGI and Gender Studies, UCT.

This paper was informed by panel presentations delivered at the Dreaming Feminist Futures Symposium in March 2018 titled ‘What is black wom?nhood: An intergenerational conversation’ held at the AGI, UCT and at A View of the Open Sky Conference: Thinking Gender and Identity from within the South African Present, held at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) in November 2018, titled ‘What is Blackwom?nhood: An intersectional dialogue’.

ORCID

Jan-Louise Lewin http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5375-0727

Notes

1. The Young Wom?n’s Leadership Project (YWL) is an action research project that aims to create safer spaces for wom?n students to engage in questions of sexuality, sexual boundaries and violence through sexual and reproductive health rights peer-education initiatives.

2. We have chosen to use the question mark in the word ‘wom?n’ in place of the A, E, X or Y. Unpacking the idea of what it means to be a wom?n, we conclude that using an A, E, X or Y can be exclusionary to people who do or do not identify as ‘women’. In using the question mark (?), we aim to constantly interrogate the idea of what it means to be a wom?n and to explore how the idea of ‘woman’ is evolving. The aim of this practice is to create a safer feminist space for dialogue. We also acknowledge the rigidity of colonial languages that do not allow for flexibility. It is thus our hope that the question mark allows for flexibility and new possibilities in this debate.

3. ‘Gaatjies’ refers to the individual whose job it is to open and close the doors of a minibus taxi, collect commuters’ fares and distribute their change. ‘Gham’ is a derogatory term by which coloured people are often called based on their socio-economic class.

4. Vuli Ndlela and Nomakanjani are both songs by South African Afropop artist Brenda Nokuzola Fassie, fondly remembered as MaBrrr.

5. Umgqusho or samp and beans is a traditional food enjoyed by Xhosa communities (among others).

6. From Butler, 1990:182.

7. At the peak of the water crisis in 2017, the City of Cape Town introduced the infamous ‘Day Zero’ as an attempt to ‘motivate’ households to drastically reduce their water consumption. On this day, the city’s taps were said to run dry as the dams would have dropped below the usable level. ‘Day Zero’ was initially scheduled for 22 April 2017 but was brought forward to 12 April if consumption did not decrease. It was eventually pushed to November 2017. However, dam levels increased significantly, averting the day from which citizens would have had to collect water from designated stations across the city.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jan-Louise Lewin

JAN-LOUISE LEWIN is an African feminist, researcher and teacher. She is the Programme Coordinator of the Young Wom?n’s Leadership Project (YWL) based at the African Gender Institute, University of Cape Town (UCT), where her research and teaching focus on the intersections of race and gender. Her research specialisations are in prison and gang culture, sex work, and coloured identities and culture. She was born and raised in Cape Town and through her work with young people hopes to grapple with issues of race and identity, personal narrative and lost cultural heritage. She attempts to embody and live the concept of ‘The personal is political’ as feminist praxis. She holds a Master’s degree in Gender Studies (distinction), a BA Honours in Gender and Transformation (distinction) and BSocSc in Gender and Sociology (distinction). She is recipient of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, NRF Masters Innovation Scholarship and AW Mellon Foundation Scholarship. Email: [email protected]

Kamohelo Mabogwane

KAMOHELO MABOGWANE is an English Literature and Language Master’s student at the University of Cape Town, a sometimes writer, always African feminist and occasional philosopher. Before that, she is a Black wom?n who was raised on her grandmother and mother's feminism in the township of a small town called Springs in the East Rand of Johannesburg. Through her scholarship and work, she aims to promote and bring to the fore the work of African feminist intellectuals, scholars and writers. She is invested in the project of making this work – from Miriam Tlali to Yaa Gyasi – readily available and accessible to young Black wom?n, especially those in high schools. Email: [email protected]

Ariana Smit

ARIANA SMIT is a writer, poet, and artist from Durban. She is currently pursuing her Master’s by dissertation in Gender Studies at the University of Cape Town (UCT). She completed her Honours (with distinction) in Gender and Transformation at UCT in 2018. Her words have been published in Type/Cast, Ja Magazine, and Prufrock. When she’s not submerged in her work, she enjoys learning Adobe software, reading feminist literature, and going for long drives to absolutely nowhere. Email: [email protected]

Andréa Alexander

ANDREA ALEXANDER is an emerging feminist scholar, writer and activist from the Cape Flats. She is currently undertaking a Master’s degree in Gender Studies at the University of Cape Town. She holds an Honours degree in Gender and Transformation, which she completed in 2018, and an undergraduate degree in Sociology and Gender Studies from the same institution. She aspires toward a career in academia and has already guest lectured in the Gender Studies department on intimate labour and coloured identity. Her interests lie at the intersections of race, class and gender and how they relate to people in the global South. Andrea hopes that her work will inspire conversations of Black excellence in all its fullness. Email: [email protected]

Amanda Mokoena

AMANDA MOKOENA is an African Studies Master’s student and an aspiring African scholar of postcolonialism and decoloniality. She is a feminist environmentalist from Eastern Free State who hopes to disrupt the knowledge systems that maintain oppressive structures and habits in South African cities, and also hopes to contribute towards realising truly decolonised African cities with equitable services, especially water and sanitation. Email: [email protected]

Chido Nyaruwata

CHIDO NYARUWATA is a Master’s in International Relations student. She is an aspiring Afro-Feminist scholar, who enjoys yoga and discovering new cities. For 25 years her feet have been stationed on both sides of the Beit Bridge border. Armed with the passion for a just Zimbabwean society, she pursued a BA (Law) degree at the University of Pretoria in 2013. This understanding of justice drives her to document how the relationships and processes defining international affairs affect African Blackwom?n as she views International Relations from an African Feminist perspective. Email: [email protected]