Alude Mahali
Biographic Data
| ID | 4218104 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alude Mahali |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alude |
| FAMILY NAME | Mahali |
| SIGNATURE | MAHALI A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Human Sciences Research Council |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9686-8239 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 30 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
A Girlhood Disrupted
In this article, I discuss Katuntu (...and you too) , a work I devised and performed with Injairu Kulundu in fulfilment of my Masters in Theatre Making from the University of Cape Town in October 2009. In the play, we harnessed memory to depict loss caused by an uprooted girlhood, portraying the consequences of fragmented memory on Black African women with immigrant pasts, in the hope that it might resonate with others who share the experience of…
MbokodoLeadUs
South Africa has a patriarchal tendency to treat womxn as beneficiaries of protest and activism rather than as agents in the construction of a new socio-political order and as drivers of change through protest. This paper examines the internal gender tensions within South Africa's 2015-2016 student movements including how these tensions materialised publicly; in a sample of university campuses and in the media. The complex particularities of youn…
Storying ourselves
Mindful of 2020’s global focus on questions of systemic racism, this article looks at the continuing salience of the South African activist Steve Biko’s ideas about Black Consciousness and consciousness-raising as they impact young people’s empowerment in African countries. In the context of the UK Research and Innovation Global Challenges Research Fund (UKRI GCRF) Accelerate Hub (2019–24), a project exploring interventions in adolescents’ lives …
The power of the poem”
Researchers exploring sensitive topics need to identify appropriate methodologies to encourage open expression. We used poetic inquiry to explore the lived realities of transwomen in Namibia, a socially marginalised group globally. We conducted two focus group discussions with 15 transwomen and developed found poems. The poems captured issues of identity and belonging and illustrated the transwomen's journeys of self-acceptance, experiences of vi…
Networks of Well-being in the Global South
The subject of human well-being continues to gain traction in disciplines as diverse as psychology, sociology, development studies, and economics. Current scholarship, however, is still largely framed by normative assumptions about what being well means, and the overwhelming majority of conceptual approaches to well-being being have been conceived and applied by researchers in the industrialized, wealthy contexts of the global North. We critique …
Disentangled, decentred and democratised
Youth Studies’ theories often assume universal generalisability despite rarely making the global South, or its youthful populations, ontologies, values and politics the focus of research. This paper grapples with the idea of a Youth Studies ‘for’ the global South, questioning whether theories/approaches that centre on the global North can be usefully applied in the global South, how and for what purpose. After describing two mainstream domains of…
Using Qualitative Tools as Interventionist Research Strategies for Emancipation
As much as South African struggles for freedom and transformation can be termed emancipatory, not all attempts to research and record them can be similarly described. This article documents the research methods employed in a qualitative study that followed 80, mostly Black students, over 5 years in order to document the struggles to succeed faced by students in South Africa. The study ultimately interrogated the centrality of race in the quest fo…
Without community, there is no liberation’
There is increasing global desire by and from black women to connect with other black women for identification, promotion of wellbeing, protection and love demonstrated by the hashtag movement: #BlackGirlMagic. In South Africa this movement has manifested through the rise of black woman-centred collectives who bring newfound power and urgency to contemporary black feminisms. These collectives are crafting unapologetic spaces centred on the lives …
A Face Like Mine
In South Africa, there is still a dearth of recognised contemporary art led by black women. In her 2008 work A Face like Mine, theatre maker Asanda Phewa, a self-identified middle-class woman of the post-apartheid era, uses the character of an unnamed maid figure to articulate her anxieties about the complexity of being a young black woman in contemporary South Africa. Phewa blurs the lines between ethnography and autobiography, self and author, …
Maid to serve
This article investigates how the domestic worker sartorial trope is reflected and embodied in contemporary South African culture. Domestic work has received very little public or media attention from feminists, trade unionists, or even political activists broadly until the recent movement of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). This article observes how the South African political party, the EFF, use the domestic worker dress as a subversionary …
Rites of passage
This article aims its attention at interrogating the integrity of choices, the state of identities and reflects upon notions of selfhood in South African choreographer and dancer Mamela Nyamza’s critically acclaimed work, Hatched. I explore rites of passage – in accordance with anthropologist Arnold van Gennep’s delineation of rites of separation, transition, incorporation – and how these are embodied and enacted in Hatched. I analyse concrete pe…
African Theatre 14
Disentangled, decentred and democratised
Youth Studies’ theories often assume universal generalisability despite rarely making the global South, or its youthful populations, ontologies, values and politics the focus of research. This paper grapples with the idea of a Youth Studies ‘for’ the global South, questioning whether theories/approaches that centre on the global North can be usefully applied in the global South, how and for what purpose. After describing two mainstream domains of…
Without community, there is no liberation’
There is increasing global desire by and from black women to connect with other black women for identification, promotion of wellbeing, protection and love demonstrated by the hashtag movement: #BlackGirlMagic. In South Africa this movement has manifested through the rise of black woman-centred collectives who bring newfound power and urgency to contemporary black feminisms. These collectives are crafting unapologetic spaces centred on the lives …
Storying ourselves
Mindful of 2020’s global focus on questions of systemic racism, this article looks at the continuing salience of the South African activist Steve Biko’s ideas about Black Consciousness and consciousness-raising as they impact young people’s empowerment in African countries. In the context of the UK Research and Innovation Global Challenges Research Fund (UKRI GCRF) Accelerate Hub (2019–24), a project exploring interventions in adolescents’ lives …
The power of the poem”
Researchers exploring sensitive topics need to identify appropriate methodologies to encourage open expression. We used poetic inquiry to explore the lived realities of transwomen in Namibia, a socially marginalised group globally. We conducted two focus group discussions with 15 transwomen and developed found poems. The poems captured issues of identity and belonging and illustrated the transwomen's journeys of self-acceptance, experiences of vi…
MbokodoLeadUs
South Africa has a patriarchal tendency to treat womxn as beneficiaries of protest and activism rather than as agents in the construction of a new socio-political order and as drivers of change through protest. This paper examines the internal gender tensions within South Africa's 2015-2016 student movements including how these tensions materialised publicly; in a sample of university campuses and in the media. The complex particularities of youn…
Using Qualitative Tools as Interventionist Research Strategies for Emancipation
As much as South African struggles for freedom and transformation can be termed emancipatory, not all attempts to research and record them can be similarly described. This article documents the research methods employed in a qualitative study that followed 80, mostly Black students, over 5 years in order to document the struggles to succeed faced by students in South Africa. The study ultimately interrogated the centrality of race in the quest fo…
African Theatre 14
Maid to serve
This article investigates how the domestic worker sartorial trope is reflected and embodied in contemporary South African culture. Domestic work has received very little public or media attention from feminists, trade unionists, or even political activists broadly until the recent movement of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). This article observes how the South African political party, the EFF, use the domestic worker dress as a subversionary …
Rites of passage
This article aims its attention at interrogating the integrity of choices, the state of identities and reflects upon notions of selfhood in South African choreographer and dancer Mamela Nyamza’s critically acclaimed work, Hatched. I explore rites of passage – in accordance with anthropologist Arnold van Gennep’s delineation of rites of separation, transition, incorporation – and how these are embodied and enacted in Hatched. I analyse concrete pe…
Without community, there is no liberation’
There is increasing global desire by and from black women to connect with other black women for identification, promotion of wellbeing, protection and love demonstrated by the hashtag movement: #BlackGirlMagic. In South Africa this movement has manifested through the rise of black woman-centred collectives who bring newfound power and urgency to contemporary black feminisms. These collectives are crafting unapologetic spaces centred on the lives …
A Face Like Mine
In South Africa, there is still a dearth of recognised contemporary art led by black women. In her 2008 work A Face like Mine, theatre maker Asanda Phewa, a self-identified middle-class woman of the post-apartheid era, uses the character of an unnamed maid figure to articulate her anxieties about the complexity of being a young black woman in contemporary South Africa. Phewa blurs the lines between ethnography and autobiography, self and author, …
Networks of Well-being in the Global South
The subject of human well-being continues to gain traction in disciplines as diverse as psychology, sociology, development studies, and economics. Current scholarship, however, is still largely framed by normative assumptions about what being well means, and the overwhelming majority of conceptual approaches to well-being being have been conceived and applied by researchers in the industrialized, wealthy contexts of the global North. We critique …
Disentangled, decentred and democratised
Youth Studies’ theories often assume universal generalisability despite rarely making the global South, or its youthful populations, ontologies, values and politics the focus of research. This paper grapples with the idea of a Youth Studies ‘for’ the global South, questioning whether theories/approaches that centre on the global North can be usefully applied in the global South, how and for what purpose. After describing two mainstream domains of…
Using Qualitative Tools as Interventionist Research Strategies for Emancipation
As much as South African struggles for freedom and transformation can be termed emancipatory, not all attempts to research and record them can be similarly described. This article documents the research methods employed in a qualitative study that followed 80, mostly Black students, over 5 years in order to document the struggles to succeed faced by students in South Africa. The study ultimately interrogated the centrality of race in the quest fo…
The power of the poem”
Researchers exploring sensitive topics need to identify appropriate methodologies to encourage open expression. We used poetic inquiry to explore the lived realities of transwomen in Namibia, a socially marginalised group globally. We conducted two focus group discussions with 15 transwomen and developed found poems. The poems captured issues of identity and belonging and illustrated the transwomen's journeys of self-acceptance, experiences of vi…
Storying ourselves
Mindful of 2020’s global focus on questions of systemic racism, this article looks at the continuing salience of the South African activist Steve Biko’s ideas about Black Consciousness and consciousness-raising as they impact young people’s empowerment in African countries. In the context of the UK Research and Innovation Global Challenges Research Fund (UKRI GCRF) Accelerate Hub (2019–24), a project exploring interventions in adolescents’ lives …
MbokodoLeadUs
South Africa has a patriarchal tendency to treat womxn as beneficiaries of protest and activism rather than as agents in the construction of a new socio-political order and as drivers of change through protest. This paper examines the internal gender tensions within South Africa's 2015-2016 student movements including how these tensions materialised publicly; in a sample of university campuses and in the media. The complex particularities of youn…
A Girlhood Disrupted
In this article, I discuss Katuntu (...and you too) , a work I devised and performed with Injairu Kulundu in fulfilment of my Masters in Theatre Making from the University of Cape Town in October 2009. In the play, we harnessed memory to depict loss caused by an uprooted girlhood, portraying the consequences of fragmented memory on Black African women with immigrant pasts, in the hope that it might resonate with others who share the experience of…
Sociology (11 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Agency (philosophy (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Social science (5 works) · South African History and Culture (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Anthropology (4 works)