Belinda Du Plooy
Biographic Data
| ID | 1264910 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Belinda Du Plooy |
| GIVEN NAMES | Belinda |
| FAMILY NAME | Du Plooy |
| SIGNATURE | DU PLOOY B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Nelson Mandela University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5036-1814 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 9 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Radical Sisterhood
Reading the written and film versions of Isak Dinesen’s ‘Babette’s Feast’ together, as texts in dialogue, offers deeper insight into this religious refugee parable and the spiritually rooted friendship, or sisterhood-philia, between its three central female characters. This is a relationship that is often overlooked by critics. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s thoughts about friendship, particularly his observation that there has been a ‘double exclu…
The link between English language proficiency and academic performance among NC(V) first-year engineering students at a South African TVET college
There is significant existing scholarship on the relationship between the English language proficiency (ELP) and academic performance (AP) of English Additional Language (EAL) learners at South African schools and universities. However, this relationship has not been explored in the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) sector in South Africa, particularly not among National Certificate (Vocational) (NC(V)) engineering students, …
Sacred Subtexts
Christ figures and holy fools are familiar religious symbols often repeated and adapted in film making. They have historically most often been depicted as male, and among the slowly growing body of female filmic christ figures, they are usually depicted as adult White women. In this article, I consider two films, Niki Caro’s Whale Rider and Disney’s Moana, in which young Indigenous girls are depicted within this trope. I engage in close reading o…
Gendered differences in the representation of men’s and women’s relationship to marriage and childbearing in business and economic contexts
Generations: The Legacy, a South African television soap opera, presents multi-layered representations of the daily lives of middle and upper class South Africans. It negotiates issues of culture, family dynamics, gender-based violence, abuse, business ethics, crime and generational wealth. The Broadcast Research Council (2019) reported that, in 2018, the programme had over eight million viewers in South Africa. Generations: The Legacy enjoys a d…
Hope is a mistake, if you can't fix what's broken you go insane
After a hiatus of 30 years since the first three films, the fourth Mad Max film was released in 2015, called Fury Road. It features the familiar eponymous character of Max, but this time alongside a female character, Imperator Furiosa. The gender dynamics of the fourth film are vastly different from those of the first three films and elicited much praise as well as criticism. It provides a new perspective through which to view the early films and…
The strategic performance of heterotopic experiences in higher education
In an interview published in Esprit, Achille Mbembe asks “what is ‘today’, and what are we today? What are the lines of fragility, the lines of precariousness, the fissures in contemporary African life? And, possibly, how could what is, be no more, how could it give birth to something else?” As a response to this question of African identity, this article is twofold. Firstly, I aim to draw together an argument that recent and ongoing debates abou…
Ubuntu and the recent phenomenon of the Charter for Compassion
Arguably for the first time in human history there is now the emergence of an inclusive existential ethical sensibility that claims to transcend religious and cultural categorizations and is accessible to, and potentially resonates with, a diverse and multifarious mainstream majority. Compassion stands at the centre of this project as a collective commonality and a cohesive driver of contemporary imagination and discourse. The recent global Chart…
A Foucauldian Reading of Power Dynamics in Two Afikaans Historical Novels Daleen Matthee's Fiela's Child and Micki Pistorius's Sorg
This article is an examination of the power-dynamics represented in two Afrikaans novels set in the Little Karoo region of South Africa; they are Dalene Matthee's Fiela's Child (1985) and Micki Pistorius's Sorg (2006). Both novels are set during the latter years of the nineteenth century, but were written and produced during the late-apartheid and early post-apartheid years. As a result, the novels reflect more of the socio-political concerns of …
Reading historical embodiment and memory in Toni Morrison's Beloved
In this paper I will use anthropologist Mary Douglas's theory of dualistic and symbolic embodiment to investigate historical embodiment and memory in Toni Morrison's slave narrative Beloved. I focus specifically on two aspects of Douglas's theory, namely the spirit/matter dualism and intimacy. In Beloved Morrison shows the destructive consequences, for an individual and a community, of a dysfunctional historical-temporal relationship. The imminen…
Gendered differences in the representation of men’s and women’s relationship to marriage and childbearing in business and economic contexts
Generations: The Legacy, a South African television soap opera, presents multi-layered representations of the daily lives of middle and upper class South Africans. It negotiates issues of culture, family dynamics, gender-based violence, abuse, business ethics, crime and generational wealth. The Broadcast Research Council (2019) reported that, in 2018, the programme had over eight million viewers in South Africa. Generations: The Legacy enjoys a d…
Hope is a mistake, if you can't fix what's broken you go insane
After a hiatus of 30 years since the first three films, the fourth Mad Max film was released in 2015, called Fury Road. It features the familiar eponymous character of Max, but this time alongside a female character, Imperator Furiosa. The gender dynamics of the fourth film are vastly different from those of the first three films and elicited much praise as well as criticism. It provides a new perspective through which to view the early films and…
The strategic performance of heterotopic experiences in higher education
In an interview published in Esprit, Achille Mbembe asks “what is ‘today’, and what are we today? What are the lines of fragility, the lines of precariousness, the fissures in contemporary African life? And, possibly, how could what is, be no more, how could it give birth to something else?” As a response to this question of African identity, this article is twofold. Firstly, I aim to draw together an argument that recent and ongoing debates abou…
Reading historical embodiment and memory in Toni Morrison's Beloved
In this paper I will use anthropologist Mary Douglas's theory of dualistic and symbolic embodiment to investigate historical embodiment and memory in Toni Morrison's slave narrative Beloved. I focus specifically on two aspects of Douglas's theory, namely the spirit/matter dualism and intimacy. In Beloved Morrison shows the destructive consequences, for an individual and a community, of a dysfunctional historical-temporal relationship. The imminen…
Ubuntu and the recent phenomenon of the Charter for Compassion
Arguably for the first time in human history there is now the emergence of an inclusive existential ethical sensibility that claims to transcend religious and cultural categorizations and is accessible to, and potentially resonates with, a diverse and multifarious mainstream majority. Compassion stands at the centre of this project as a collective commonality and a cohesive driver of contemporary imagination and discourse. The recent global Chart…
A Foucauldian Reading of Power Dynamics in Two Afikaans Historical Novels Daleen Matthee's Fiela's Child and Micki Pistorius's Sorg
This article is an examination of the power-dynamics represented in two Afrikaans novels set in the Little Karoo region of South Africa; they are Dalene Matthee's Fiela's Child (1985) and Micki Pistorius's Sorg (2006). Both novels are set during the latter years of the nineteenth century, but were written and produced during the late-apartheid and early post-apartheid years. As a result, the novels reflect more of the socio-political concerns of …
The strategic performance of heterotopic experiences in higher education
In an interview published in Esprit, Achille Mbembe asks “what is ‘today’, and what are we today? What are the lines of fragility, the lines of precariousness, the fissures in contemporary African life? And, possibly, how could what is, be no more, how could it give birth to something else?” As a response to this question of African identity, this article is twofold. Firstly, I aim to draw together an argument that recent and ongoing debates abou…
Gendered differences in the representation of men’s and women’s relationship to marriage and childbearing in business and economic contexts
Generations: The Legacy, a South African television soap opera, presents multi-layered representations of the daily lives of middle and upper class South Africans. It negotiates issues of culture, family dynamics, gender-based violence, abuse, business ethics, crime and generational wealth. The Broadcast Research Council (2019) reported that, in 2018, the programme had over eight million viewers in South Africa. Generations: The Legacy enjoys a d…
Hope is a mistake, if you can't fix what's broken you go insane
After a hiatus of 30 years since the first three films, the fourth Mad Max film was released in 2015, called Fury Road. It features the familiar eponymous character of Max, but this time alongside a female character, Imperator Furiosa. The gender dynamics of the fourth film are vastly different from those of the first three films and elicited much praise as well as criticism. It provides a new perspective through which to view the early films and…
Sacred Subtexts
Christ figures and holy fools are familiar religious symbols often repeated and adapted in film making. They have historically most often been depicted as male, and among the slowly growing body of female filmic christ figures, they are usually depicted as adult White women. In this article, I consider two films, Niki Caro’s Whale Rider and Disney’s Moana, in which young Indigenous girls are depicted within this trope. I engage in close reading o…
The link between English language proficiency and academic performance among NC(V) first-year engineering students at a South African TVET college
There is significant existing scholarship on the relationship between the English language proficiency (ELP) and academic performance (AP) of English Additional Language (EAL) learners at South African schools and universities. However, this relationship has not been explored in the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) sector in South Africa, particularly not among National Certificate (Vocational) (NC(V)) engineering students, …
Radical Sisterhood
Reading the written and film versions of Isak Dinesen’s ‘Babette’s Feast’ together, as texts in dialogue, offers deeper insight into this religious refugee parable and the spiritually rooted friendship, or sisterhood-philia, between its three central female characters. This is a relationship that is often overlooked by critics. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s thoughts about friendship, particularly his observation that there has been a ‘double exclu…
Philosophy (7 works) · Political science (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Art (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Narrative (4 works) · Aesthetics (3 works) · Epistemology (3 works) · History (3 works) · Linguistics (3 works)