National reconciliation and nation building: reflections on the TRC in post apartheid South Africa

Paper presented at the Wits History Workshop: The TRC; Commissioning the Past, 11-14 June, 199

From anger to nuance: Melissa Kiguwa discusses her evolution as a writer

Ahead of her performance at the Africa Writes Festival in London, LSE’s Melissa Kiguwa discusses her sources of inspiration

Top or Bottom? Varsity youth talk about gay sexuality in a Stepping Stones Workshop: Implications for sexual health

This paper discusses the constructs of sexuality amongst a group of LGBTI university students during a Stepping Stones workshop aimed at exploring their engagement with sexual and reproductive health rights issues as it affects them. These constructs include notions of binary identities of being gay, such as being a ‘top’ versus being a ‘bottom’, that are then applied to sexual practices and behaviour that have serious implications for sexual health and bodily integrity. We discuss the intersections of gender identity, sexuality, sexual health and sexual rights, arguing that such constructs are not only limiting in their demarcations of sexual boundaries in relationships and for intimacy but also that attempts to engage sexual health promotion must take into account the intersecting identities of gender and sexuality that are tied to sexual behaviour

'So I decided not to invade straight black men's space': exploring heteronormative spaces on campus

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Psychology and the problematic of “the African”

In this commentary we extend Manganyi’s critique of Eurocentric and Western scientific practice of engaging the African Other as inherently strange and unfamiliar. This particular mode of representation and knowing the Other is functional in embodying a uniqueness that renders African bodies as non-human. It is also functional in reifying a science that pretends to objective practice. We take up Manganyi’s notion of making strange to interrogate some of the nuances of what it means to engage the Other in the context of a socio-political and historical analysis. We further present some of the problematics of trying to understand the current contexts of social ills in society through a lens that does not reproduce this dehumanising meaning of subjectivities and groups, and that does not end up making strange what we are trying to understand. Lastly, we posit some problematics concerning how Africans as colonised peoples have been made strange to themselves and become entangled in relations of violence and power that make the familiar unfamiliar even to themselves

Layers of woundedness in Inxeba : masculinities disrupted, denied and defamed

Abstract: In this paper, we discuss the multi-layered representations of masculinities as they appear in the film Inxeba. Reading these multi-layered representations against a backdrop of the initiation practice of ulwaluko highlights the significance of heteronormativity in defining and engaging critical African Black masculinities in South Africa today. This is further compounded through the intersecting nuances of race and class configurations that matter for how contemporary Black masculinities are constructed. We argue that Inxeba’s successes and failures of representation bring to the fore intricate debates and ethical dilemmas of representation in the arts and social sciences more generally. In addition, if Inxeba fails in its (mis)representation of ulwaluko as less than a complex, nuanced and rich cultural practice, it is arguably successful in its exploration of the deeply entrenched heteronormative socio-material and psychical space of this practice

Why do we have sex? Reflections from a Stepping Stones participatory action research with youth LGBTI in Johannesburg

Research on youth homosexuality is predominantly deficit model orientated. This research principally focuses on the impact of being different, low self-worth, distress, stigma, discrimination, HIV and so on.  Data gathered through a series of Stepping Stones workshops conducted at a local University in Gauteng provided us with an opportunity to explore young lesbian, gay and bisexual men and women’s engagement with sex. The aim of this study was to understanding the relevance of Stepping Stones for the LGB community, inform about circumstances surrounding why LGB youth engage in sex and offer a comparison with research from heterosexual youth. The authors facilitated nine workshop sessions with twelve lesbian, gay and bisexual men and women aged 18-25 at the University using Stepping Stones. Data analysed was drawn from the session entitled ‘Why we behave as we do’.  We used a thematic analytic approach to analyse the data. Some of the motivations for sex were in fact about the participants; they wanted to have sex.  Off course others were about the partner; sex was engaged in to please the other. This study concludes that the reasons lesbian, gay and bisexual youth engage in sex may not be unique and thus they too need to be included in mainstream sexuality and safer sex interventions

Telling stories of race: a study of racialised subjectivity in the post-apartheid academy

This report is submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand. Johannesburg, February 2014This study draws on in-depth interviews conducted with twenty black students from different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds studying at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. It attempts to explore and understand some of the complexities of racial subjectivities in a post-apartheid and racially diverse institutional context through Bourdieu’s constructs of habitus and field. Furthermore the psychosocial and phenomenological approach to theorizing black subjectivity evident in the theories of Fanon and Du Bois are further used to explore the complexities of racialised habitus. Bourdieu argues that encounter with an unfamiliar field will result in transformed habitus (socialized subjectivity). The subject’s movement and participation in different and unfamiliar fields will result in habitus that is conflicted and fraught with tension. Through a critical heremeneutic approach the analyses suggests much more complex, ambiguous and contradictory articulations of racialised subjectivity that manifest in relation with dimensions of cultural capital. These in turn produce complex processes of racialization for these students. The narrative analysis of content explores thematic content of the data and demonstrates dominant themes related to constructs of racialised subjectivity, with particular focus on ‘blackness’ as a distinct and contradictory construct. Through positive and negative constructs of blackness, both interpersonal and generalized interaction patterns of these students on campus is shown to reflect intricate ways that racialised boundaries are both created and sustained. The discursive layer of analysis further demonstrates the at times essentializing and contradictory deployment of race used by the students in their navigation of the academic field. The analysis of form further highlights similar and diverse academic trajectories of the students that are interwoven with accounts of racialised and classed histories. These accounts highlight the perceived importance of race in the accruement of cultural capital attributes both prior to and during their immersion within the academic context at tertiary level. The study argues for a more concerted effort at documenting the lived experiences of racialization including the subjective negotiation of multiple and contradicting interpellation processes within higher education more generally. Key Words: race, subjectivity, habitus, field, students, tertiary institution, Bourdieu, Fanon, Du Boi

Love as Method: Tracing the Contours of Love in Black and African Feminist Imaginations of Liberation

What imaginations of the self are evident in Black and African feminist visions of Black liberation? How is love framed as a centring politics of Black liberation across social and political struggles? These two questions address two features of Black and African feminist social justice politics: first, a re-imagining of the self via routes of the communal self and love of oneself; and, second, a centring of love as fundamental to any project of Black liberation. Exploring these two trajectories, the article engages gendered love in terms of its material and affective registers within feminist struggles for justice and healing. To do this, select readings of African and Black feminist theorising, reflections, and activist works are explored including Pumla Gqola, Sharlene Khan, June Jordan, bell hooks amongst others. The intellectual diversity of these feminist contributions connects with reference to a feminist project that is rooted in (re)imaginings of love and self that are simultaneously personal yet also political. In the end, the project of Black liberation must address itself to the place of love in healing. The article explores what some of these features of love liberation could entail