(Un)thinking Citizenship

What does it mean to be a citizen in a society whose constitution promises an impressive array of rights, yet where the lived reality is one of pervasive violence, fear, poverty and HIV/AIDS? The diverse array of practitioner and activist authors in this collection are insistent that it means liberal citizenship is insufficient. In the opening essay, Linzi Manicom argues that neither substantive rights nor women-as-citizens directly undermine gender or its effects. Alternatively, she suggests feminists not only examine how ‘women’ are discursively constituted as political subjects, but also decipher the political impact of such constructions. Manicom identifies three discourses of gendered citizenship in South Africa—de-gendered individual rights-bearing subjects, women-as-citizen and mother-citizens of the nation. She warns feminists to be attentive to ways in which articulation(s) of citizenship—even those that embrace equal rights—can be essentializing and can be mobilized to promote elite interests, re-inscribing existing divisions among women. Shireen Hassim's contribution analyses how citizenship trumped nationalist discourses to become a dominant political ideal during the South African transition to democracy. She provides the historical backdrop to Manicom's contemporary critique, reminding us that ‘women-as-citizen’ was constructed by a wide range of South African women who were divided not only by race and class, but also by political ideology. As a result, they built their discursive framework on a thin notion of sisterhood: exclusion from the transition negotiations.

Citizenship · Democracy · Ideology · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Gender Studies · Law · Legal Issues in South Africa · South African History and Culture

• In bodies and homes

  Open Access•Sophie Oldfield, Netsai Sarah Mathsaka et al.•Urbani izziv•2019

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