Daughters of the soil: Gender and nationalism in South Africa.
Item
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Title
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Daughters of the soil: Gender and nationalism in South Africa.
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Identifier
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AAI3037442
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identifier
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3037442
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Creator
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Self, Sayida Lovely.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Leith Mullings
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Date
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2002
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Anthropology, Cultural | History, African | Women's Studies
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Abstract
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This dissertation is concerned with the relationship between gender and nationalism within the Pan-Africanist movement of South Africa. I argue that women's participation in nationalist projects raises contradictions for women's activism. Political activism draws women into struggles around rights, justice and the redistribution of power. However women's activism does not necessarily precipitate a commitment to gender equity or the integration of a critical gender perspective into social movements. I examine the junctures where gender analysis is subordinated to discourses on the nation and where women become a homogenized category. The nationalism of South African Pan-Africanism elaborates notions of identity, nationhood and Africaness. This form of Pan-Africanism is shaped by the cleavages of race, class, gender and nationality in South Africa. I contend that as a political ideology, South African Pan-Africanism minimally addresses gender as a point of struggle.;The project also explores the ways in which Africanist women construct their identities as Black and African women. I address how Pan-Africanism positively informs the agency of activist women while simultaneously upholding unequal dynamics of power between men and women. Africanist women are both empowered by their political activism and challenged by the structures of their organization when they aspire for leadership. This writing focuses on the manner in which activist women constitute the militants of a movement while situated on the margins of power. In South Africa motherhood, both fictive and biological was pivotal to the continuity of Pan-Africanism and the social reproduction of activists. Gender-based roles became templates for the diverse ways in which women mobilized adherents and organized constituents.;Africanist women juxtapose race and national identity when they articulate the nationalism of Pan-Africanism. I analyze the interface between the nation, as constructed by Pan-Africanism and systems of gender power, in the construction of personal narratives. It is women who must make the theoretical and organizational linkages between the representation of authority in a movement and the engendering of justice.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
