On the ‘demonic grounds’ of South African higher education: centering Black women and queer activists’ experiences in decolonization movements

Abstract

Amidst the global wave of decolonization movements, the #RhodesMustFall (#RMF) movement in South Africa has echoed globally, connecting struggles against racism and colonial legacies such as Black Lives Matter movement in the U.S. to Change the Date campaign in Australia. This study focuses on the experiences of Black women and queer activists within #RMF, examining their role in disrupting hegemonic patriarchy and addressing gender-based violence. Using McKittrick’s (2006) demonic grounds as an epistemic framework, we delve into how Black women and queer activists navigate and resist ‘violent grounds’ spaces of historical oppression and violence – within their geographical and institutional contexts in South Africa. Our findings reveal how such violence is an empirical manifestation of the ‘demonic’ and how resistance materializes through counter-movements and oppositional politics in contested spaces. This research illuminates the intricate dynamics of resistance within the #RMF movement and highlights its significance as a microcosm of broader struggles for social justice, emphasizing the transformative power of marginalized voices in the global discourse on decolonization.

Keywords:

• Activism
• counter-movement
• demonic grounds
• gender-based violence
• South African higher education
• #RhodesMustFall

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We capitalize Black within this work to resist the ways Black people have experienced invisibility globally (Dumas, 2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amalia Z. Daché

Amalia Z. Daché is an associate professor of higher education at the University of Pennsylvania. Her major research areas are the geographic contexts of urban higher education, Afro-Latin American studies, community and student resistance, and the college-access experiences of African diasporic students and communities.

Alice E. Lee

Alice E. Lee is a Ph.D. student at the University of Arizona’s Center for the Study of Higher Education. Her research focuses on how culturally responsive practices and pedagogies influence the equity and achievement of BIPOC students in STEM.

Stephanie Hernandez Rivera

Stephanie Hernandez Rivera, PhD (she/her/ella) is an assistant professor in the Master of Arts in Higher Education program at Elon University. Guided by Women of Color feminisms and race-gender based methodologies, her research focuses on the identity development, experiences, and resistance strategies of intersectionally-marginalized people in higher education, most specifically Women of Color.

Astrid Pickenpack

Astrid Pickenpack is a Chilean educational researcher and currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. Her doctoral dissertation analyses how higher education institutions in the U.S. conceptualize Latinidad and how those conceptualizations are intertwined with the construction of “Hispanic” as a population within the country.