Prototypical women

This issue of Agenda with the theme of prototypical women serves as an intervention to identify and foreground significant women. It is an intervention that decries the relative invisibility of women in our histories. The original call for papers noted that the issue envisaged shining a light on women who have altered the course of history for a group. Its intention was to tell the stories of prolific women throughout Africa, to remind us of those women who are already known and therefore visible, but also those who operate in the background and out of the limelight. Allowing for the diversity of women, it seeks to celebrate the contribution of women within collective movements for social justice.

However, as it turned out, the name of the theme, ‘prototypical women’, has provoked contesting responses in the contributions to this issue. The reason that it provokes contrary approaches, I wish to suggest, pertains to the slippage of the signifier, prototype. What do you understand by that signifier? My initial response to the theme was one of irritation, precisely because of my reading of the term. A prototype? What came to mind was the idea of a blueprint for a manufactured item, an exemplar, or an (industrial) mould, but certainly not the sense of women in their glorious diversity of place, time, bodies, thoughts and cultural identities. I therefore did not think at first of a prototype as something to celebrate or emulate! Some of the authors have used the term in a celebratory way; others have used the term as synonymous with stereotype.

To return to the slippage of the signifier: within the fields of linguistics and cultural studies, signifiers create meaning by reference to that which they are not, for example ‘white’ has meaning because it is not black, or also not blue or red. ‘Woman’ signifies as not man or, perhaps, not girl; the south as not the north, but by extension not the west or the east either, and so on. The relationship between the signifier and what it signifies is an arbitrary one. Deconstructionist theorists developed the concept of the ‘slippage of the signifier’ and thus recognise the instability of the signifier (in this instance, ‘prototype’) and how the signifier and the signified are not essentially linked. To hold a single meaning is like trying to hold onto a slippery eel. Certainly, prototype and stereotype belong to a chain of signifiers and both have certain traces of meaning, held in place by the root word, -type. The slippage of this signifier is evident when ‘prototype’ becomes synonymous with ‘stereotype’ as happens in some of the papers in this issue. Proto- and stereo- types differ from each other by virtue of their prefixes: proto and stereo. If the classical Greek prefix ‘proto’ conventionally refers to the first, the earliest form of, or the original, stereo does something quite different. For the classical Greek it implies something solid or firm. A stereotype thus refers to making something firm or permanent. The stereotyping of women is something feminists oppose.

In this issue, readers will confront different approaches to the term. Some authors use a celebratory tone when referring to the woman they are discussing as ‘prototypical’. Others warn against the prototypical as though synonymous with stereotypical. In spite of the different readings of the signifier, ‘prototype’, the contributions in the issue are in effect two sides of the same coin - they celebrate women who are phenomenal and affirm the importance of such role models for other women (and men, of course) to emulate. They also reject type casting and the straightjackets of patriarchy, race, economic status or geography. These contributions will hopefully present the readers with inspiring narratives and deep reflections.

Here, because of my own feelings about the prototype, I propose we celebrate the ‘phenomenal woman’ recorded in this issue. Of course, I am borrowing this term from just such a woman. You will have recognised her probably: North American black feminist, author, activist - Maya Angelou. Here I must quote her – for this issue celebrates those who might say:

‘Cause I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.