Citizenship and social status in Miriam Tlali’s Muriel at Metropolitan
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10836333 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lieselot Tuytens (0000-0002-6710-6702, Ghent University Hospital, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 61 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 35-45 |
| Publication date | 2024-04-30 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Tydskrif vir letterkunde (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0041-476X • E-ISSN: 2309-9070 |
| Publisher | Academy of Science of South Africa (PUBLISHER • ZA) |
| DOI | 10.17159/tl.v61i1.16064 |
| OpenAlex | W4396530981 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 17 |
An intersectional feminist stance was reflected in South African literary texts as early as the 1970s. Miriam Tlali’s pioneering work Muriel at Metropolitan (1975), for example, explores how black women are most palpably confronted with intersecting oppressions and inequalities because of mutually reinforcing axes of race, ethnicity, gender, and class. These social categories provided the basis to differentiate groups from each other and were utilised to produce unequal power relations. Such inequalities were not only created by the apartheid regime, but also by African Customary Law, although the latter was subject to the twin influences of colonialism and apartheid. In this article I analyse five key passages of the novel through an intersectional lens by looking into the correlation between these systems, intersectional axes, citizenship, and social status. The close reading of the extracts shows that the characters’ civil rights are curtailed, and their social status reduced through inter alia dehumanising stereotypes, racial and gendered naming strategies, and polarising pronouns. Furthermore, the discursive counterreactions of the black female protagonist Muriel are charted. These consist of rational argumentation, norm-breaking, objectification, and distancing techniques. Her retorts represent her resistance against multiple subjugations and take the shape of what is now called intersectional feminism(s)
Citizenship · Colonialism · Norm (philosophy · Objectification · Political science · Politics · Sociology · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Gender Studies · Law · Legal Issues in South Africa · South African History and Culture
Intersectionality
Echoes of Miriam Tlali
And Wrote My Story Anyway
African Customary Law, Customs, and Women's Rights
Freedom for women
Intersectionality as multi-level analysis
Feminist intersectionality and the matrix of domination in South Africa
Rewriting apartheid South Africa
Rethinking ‘masculinities in transition’ in South Africa considering the ‘intersectionality’ of race, class, and sexuality with gender
Overcoming the ‘daily bludgeoning by apartheid
Intersectionality and Feminist Politics
Feminist originalism
| Highly cited | No |
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