“Womxn like me are made”: politics and poetics in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen
- Authors: Wilken, Chelsey
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Rankine, Claudia, 1963- Citizen , Putuma, Koleka -- Collective amnesia , Black people -- Race identity , Black people in literature
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/145735 , vital:38462
- Description: This thesis utilises an interdisciplinary approach to understand the political significance of the experimental poetics used by Claudia Rankine in Citizen: An American Lyric and Koleka Putuma in Collective Amnesia. Rankine and Putuma offer contemporary reflections on what it means to occupy marginalised spaces in society. These artists experiment with formal and conventional aspects of literature to explore and create new definitions of what it means to be Black in society. Their works and techniques allow for thinking outside of dominant ideologies of race and posit alternative Black identities that are not found within canonical theory on Blackness. This project reflects on existing theories of Black subjectivity as evident in Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks and Aimé Césaire’s Notebook on the Return to My Native Land. While these theorists did not reject the role of Black women in Western civilisation, they should be read as a moment in a series of counter-discourse to the Black Other rather than the finite canon of Black subjectivity. The emergence of Rankine and Putuma’s experimental poetics works to disrupt the conflation of the Black subject with the Black heteronormative male. Using Michelle M. Wright’s Physics of Blackness as its primary theoretical framework, this project advocates alternative and disruptive readings of Blackness that potentially shift Blackness away from its conflation with nationalism, masculinity and heteronormativity. This thesis uses a dialogical approach between political theory and literature which allows for Citizen and Collective Amnesia to be read as acts of resistance to epistemological erasure and as articulations of the politics relevant to the poets’ lived experiences. Both the United States and South Africa have a history of institutionalised racial segregation, which allows Rankine and Putuma to be read in relation to one another. Where the Civil Rights movement and the anti-apartheid struggle were both foregrounded as male-lead liberation movements contemporary social movements including #blacklivesmatter and #feesmustfall have initiated a return to the androcentric philosophies of Malcom X and Steve Biko, for example. As such Rankine and Putuma’s literature and art marks a reclamation of female empowerment and visibility in the face of a political rhetoric that continues to be masculine and nationalist in nature. In the absence of a space where Black female and queer bodies are adequately recognised, the poetry they write creates a space of self-representation and recognition.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Wilken, Chelsey
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Rankine, Claudia, 1963- Citizen , Putuma, Koleka -- Collective amnesia , Black people -- Race identity , Black people in literature
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/145735 , vital:38462
- Description: This thesis utilises an interdisciplinary approach to understand the political significance of the experimental poetics used by Claudia Rankine in Citizen: An American Lyric and Koleka Putuma in Collective Amnesia. Rankine and Putuma offer contemporary reflections on what it means to occupy marginalised spaces in society. These artists experiment with formal and conventional aspects of literature to explore and create new definitions of what it means to be Black in society. Their works and techniques allow for thinking outside of dominant ideologies of race and posit alternative Black identities that are not found within canonical theory on Blackness. This project reflects on existing theories of Black subjectivity as evident in Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks and Aimé Césaire’s Notebook on the Return to My Native Land. While these theorists did not reject the role of Black women in Western civilisation, they should be read as a moment in a series of counter-discourse to the Black Other rather than the finite canon of Black subjectivity. The emergence of Rankine and Putuma’s experimental poetics works to disrupt the conflation of the Black subject with the Black heteronormative male. Using Michelle M. Wright’s Physics of Blackness as its primary theoretical framework, this project advocates alternative and disruptive readings of Blackness that potentially shift Blackness away from its conflation with nationalism, masculinity and heteronormativity. This thesis uses a dialogical approach between political theory and literature which allows for Citizen and Collective Amnesia to be read as acts of resistance to epistemological erasure and as articulations of the politics relevant to the poets’ lived experiences. Both the United States and South Africa have a history of institutionalised racial segregation, which allows Rankine and Putuma to be read in relation to one another. Where the Civil Rights movement and the anti-apartheid struggle were both foregrounded as male-lead liberation movements contemporary social movements including #blacklivesmatter and #feesmustfall have initiated a return to the androcentric philosophies of Malcom X and Steve Biko, for example. As such Rankine and Putuma’s literature and art marks a reclamation of female empowerment and visibility in the face of a political rhetoric that continues to be masculine and nationalist in nature. In the absence of a space where Black female and queer bodies are adequately recognised, the poetry they write creates a space of self-representation and recognition.
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How does security limit the right to protest? : a study examining the securitised response to protest in South Africa
- Authors: Royeppen, Andrea Leigh
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Protest movements -- South Africa , Political violence -- South Africa , South Africa -- Politics and government -- 21st century , Civil rights -- South Africa , Police power -- South Africa , Abuse of administrative power -- South Africa , Police -- Complaints against -- South Africa , Right to strike -- South Africa , Democracy -- South Africa , Political leadership -- South Africa -- 21st century , Political participation -- South Africa , African National Congress , South African Police Service
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2878 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013071
- Description: In South Africa, the right to protest is under constant threat as a result of the state response. Increasing cases of forceful policing and sometimes unlawful procedural prohibitions of protest attest to this. This study aims to firstly describe this situation through securitisation theory, essentially arguing that South Africa has become a securitised state. It also aims to understand how this is sustained by the state and why the state needs to use a securitised response to maintain power. Interviews were conducted with members of different communities and organisations. Their responses helped to illustrate the frustration of the right to protest or brutal policing during a protest. This provided primary evidence to support the claims of the study. The research shows that claims to protest are being delegitimised under the guise of security as protestors are being constructed as threats to the state. This is further substantiated by looking at how the reorganisation and remililtarisation of the South African Police perpetuates the criminalisation of protestors which necessitates a forceful response from the state. Furthermore, it shows that there is a distinct relationship between the prohibition of protest and the recent increase in ‘violent’ protests which legitimate forceful policing thereby creating a state sustained cycle of violence. The larger implication of this treatment is that these protestors are treated as non- citizens who are definitively excluded from participating in governance. In understanding why this is taking place, it is clear that a securtitised response is an attempt to maintain power by dispelling any threats to power, a response which is seen to have a long history in the African National Congress (ANC) when examining the politics of the ANC during exile. Maintaining power in this way distracts from the larger agenda of the state, which this thesis argues, is to mask the unraveling of the ANC’s hegemony and inability to maintain national unity. In other words, the increasing dissatisfaction of some of the citizenry which has manifested through protest greatly undermines the legitimacy of the government to provide for its people.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Royeppen, Andrea Leigh
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Protest movements -- South Africa , Political violence -- South Africa , South Africa -- Politics and government -- 21st century , Civil rights -- South Africa , Police power -- South Africa , Abuse of administrative power -- South Africa , Police -- Complaints against -- South Africa , Right to strike -- South Africa , Democracy -- South Africa , Political leadership -- South Africa -- 21st century , Political participation -- South Africa , African National Congress , South African Police Service
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2878 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013071
- Description: In South Africa, the right to protest is under constant threat as a result of the state response. Increasing cases of forceful policing and sometimes unlawful procedural prohibitions of protest attest to this. This study aims to firstly describe this situation through securitisation theory, essentially arguing that South Africa has become a securitised state. It also aims to understand how this is sustained by the state and why the state needs to use a securitised response to maintain power. Interviews were conducted with members of different communities and organisations. Their responses helped to illustrate the frustration of the right to protest or brutal policing during a protest. This provided primary evidence to support the claims of the study. The research shows that claims to protest are being delegitimised under the guise of security as protestors are being constructed as threats to the state. This is further substantiated by looking at how the reorganisation and remililtarisation of the South African Police perpetuates the criminalisation of protestors which necessitates a forceful response from the state. Furthermore, it shows that there is a distinct relationship between the prohibition of protest and the recent increase in ‘violent’ protests which legitimate forceful policing thereby creating a state sustained cycle of violence. The larger implication of this treatment is that these protestors are treated as non- citizens who are definitively excluded from participating in governance. In understanding why this is taking place, it is clear that a securtitised response is an attempt to maintain power by dispelling any threats to power, a response which is seen to have a long history in the African National Congress (ANC) when examining the politics of the ANC during exile. Maintaining power in this way distracts from the larger agenda of the state, which this thesis argues, is to mask the unraveling of the ANC’s hegemony and inability to maintain national unity. In other words, the increasing dissatisfaction of some of the citizenry which has manifested through protest greatly undermines the legitimacy of the government to provide for its people.
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Marikana : taking a subaltern sphere of politics seriously
- Authors: Naicker, Camalita
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Miners -- South Africa -- Rustenburg -- Social conditions -- 21st century , Mineral industries -- Political aspects -- South Africa , Violence -- South Africa -- Rustenburg , Massacres -- South Africa -- Rustenburg , Strikes and lockouts -- Miners -- South Africa , Political leadership -- South Africa , Industrial relations -- South Africa , Marxist criticism , Marikana (Rustenburg, South Africa)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2886 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015651
- Description: This thesis aims to open up the realm of what counts as political in the context of the Marikana strikes and subsequent massacre. It does primarily by taking into account the social, political and cultural context of Mpondo workers on the mines. Many narrow Marxist and liberal frameworks have circumscribed the conception of the ‘modern’ and the ‘political’ so much so that political organisation which falls outside of this conceptualisation is often regarded as ‘backward’ or ‘archaic’. It will provide an examination of the history, culture and custom of men, who have, for almost a hundred years migrated back and forth between South African mines and Mpondoland. This not only reveals differing modes of organising and engaging in political action, but also that the praxis of democracy takes many forms, some of which are different and opposed to what counts as democratic in Western liberal democracy. By considering what I argue, following some of the insights from the Subaltern Studies collective in India, to be a subaltern sphere of politics and history, it is possible to better understand the way workers organised and acted. The thesis also argues that most labour and nationalist historiography has been silent on the political contributions of women because of how Marxist/liberal analysis frames struggles through disciplined notions of work and resistance. Rather than objectifying workers as representatives of a homogenous and universal class of people devoid of context, the thesis has linked ‘the worker’ to the community from which s/he comes and community specific struggles, which are supported and sustained, often, by the parallel struggles of women in the community.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Naicker, Camalita
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Miners -- South Africa -- Rustenburg -- Social conditions -- 21st century , Mineral industries -- Political aspects -- South Africa , Violence -- South Africa -- Rustenburg , Massacres -- South Africa -- Rustenburg , Strikes and lockouts -- Miners -- South Africa , Political leadership -- South Africa , Industrial relations -- South Africa , Marxist criticism , Marikana (Rustenburg, South Africa)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2886 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015651
- Description: This thesis aims to open up the realm of what counts as political in the context of the Marikana strikes and subsequent massacre. It does primarily by taking into account the social, political and cultural context of Mpondo workers on the mines. Many narrow Marxist and liberal frameworks have circumscribed the conception of the ‘modern’ and the ‘political’ so much so that political organisation which falls outside of this conceptualisation is often regarded as ‘backward’ or ‘archaic’. It will provide an examination of the history, culture and custom of men, who have, for almost a hundred years migrated back and forth between South African mines and Mpondoland. This not only reveals differing modes of organising and engaging in political action, but also that the praxis of democracy takes many forms, some of which are different and opposed to what counts as democratic in Western liberal democracy. By considering what I argue, following some of the insights from the Subaltern Studies collective in India, to be a subaltern sphere of politics and history, it is possible to better understand the way workers organised and acted. The thesis also argues that most labour and nationalist historiography has been silent on the political contributions of women because of how Marxist/liberal analysis frames struggles through disciplined notions of work and resistance. Rather than objectifying workers as representatives of a homogenous and universal class of people devoid of context, the thesis has linked ‘the worker’ to the community from which s/he comes and community specific struggles, which are supported and sustained, often, by the parallel struggles of women in the community.
- Full Text:
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