This is our speech
Voice, body and poetic form in recent South African writing
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3633932 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gabeba Baderoon (0000-0001-5470-2364, South African Association of Women Graduates, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 213-227 |
| Publication date | 2011-06-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Dynamics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0253-3952 • E-ISSN: 1940-7874 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/02533952.2011.600822 |
| OpenAlex | W2059393279 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 10 |
In recent years, different South African literary genres have revealed writers' innovative efforts to name subjectivities and experiences that have been erased by legacies of colonial and sexual violence. By analysing the poem 'Tongues of Their Mothers', the novel Unconfessed and the play Reclaiming the P...Word, this essay traces a shift away from realistic representations of the physical and symbolic violence to which Black women's bodies have been and continue to be subjected. Arguing that an emphasis on violence can unwittingly re-inscribe invasive acts and representations, this article shows how poetic strategies and registers can be used to write Black women's bodies into alternative modes of visibility. Through a complex interplay of silence and reclamation, the texts unflinchingly confront the legacies, meanings and forms of sexual violence in South Africa, while also conveying new understandings of their histories and the languages that support them. Poetic language provides a powerful means of naming ubiquitous, naturalised and erased violence, and is also shown to offer regenerative ways of configuring the resilience, authority and pleasures of those usually seen only as the bodies onto and through which dominant subjects' desires are violently inscribed. Keywords: Black women's bodiesinvasive visibilityinvisibilitypoetic languagepainpleasuresexual violenceslavery Notes 1. I write about alternative approaches to Baartman in 'Baartman and the Private' (Baderoon Citation2011). 2. This forms a turning point in the plot of the novel, when her owners rename Sila as a Cape-born slave in order to re-enslave her after she had been granted her freedom in the will of a former owner. 3. I have previously used this approach in researching the historical meanings of another term of abuse that survived from the period of slavery to apartheid, 'kaffir', and showed through its etymology the specific ways in which race and sex are encoded in the term (Baderoon Citation2009)
Aesthetics · Art · Colonialism · Inscribed figure · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Poetry · Silence · Sociology · Zulu · Gender Studies · History · Philosophy · South African History and Culture
| Citations per year | 0.8 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2016 - 2025 (10) |
| Highly cited | No |