Out of place: an analysis of place as a contributor to the complexities of my “coloured” identity in Malabar, Gqeberha
- Authors: Flowers, Victoria
- Date: 2024-04
- Subjects: Colored people (South Africa) -- Race identity , Ethnicity in art -- South Africa -- Port Elizabeth , Modernism (Art)
- Language: English
- Type: Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/62780 , vital:72954
- Description: Coloured identity has been a historical point of contestation in South Africa because Colouredness is assumed as “an inbred quality that arises automatically from miscegenation while instrumentalists share the essentialist premise that coloured identity is something negative and undesirable but blame it on the racism and the exploitative practices of the ruling white minority” (Adhikari, 2009: 15). This archaic belief attributed to racial mixture has now become redundant, due to the emergence of new hybridised Coloured identities that factor other ethnic and cultural groups as well as internal and external elements into their conception. The role of Place in the formation of Coloured identities is at the core of this fine arts based enquiry. This study is located in Malabar, Gqeberha which was established after the forced removals onset by the Group Areas Act of 1950 and the displacement of residents from South End. Additionally, it considers specific locations significant in their linkages to hybridised peoples, and how the place and individuals have been influenced by historical legacies of colonisation and apartheid. These are examined to consider their function in contextualising contemporary lived experiences of Coloured identity within the community of Malabar and its effect on artistic practice through autoethnographic research. Through this autoethnographic and reflexive study and the accompanying empirical research process, I critically examine and explore my Coloured identity as part of being-in-the-world (Heidegger, 1962). This ‘being’ is multifaceted as a result of the significance of Place in South Africa and how it has shaped my perception of how and where I have a sense of being and belonging. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, School Visual and Performing Arts, 2023
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- Date Issued: 2024-04
The social and political identities of coloured women in the northern areas of Port Elizabeth
- Authors: Barker, Celeste Heloise
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: Women, Colored -- South Africa -- Port Elizabeth , Colored people (South Africa) -- Race identity , Ethnicity -- South Africa -- Port Elizabeth
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MPhil
- Identifier: vital:8261 , http://hdl.handle.net/10948/d1013081
- Description: This treatise explores the social and political identity of coloured women in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro (NMBM) with the intention of understanding why some stereotypes of coloured women‟s identity have endured since colonialism in South Africa. Topic selection was stimulated by heated public response to a newspaper article (“Jou Ma se Kinders” (Your Mother‟s Children), (Roberts 2011: http://www.lifeissavage.com/) which negatively labeled and pigeon-holed coloured women‟s identity. With the notable exception of the Saartje Baartman story, most text selection in the Literature Review (Chapter 2) was informed by research in the Western Cape because studies have a patriarchal bias and there are scant records of coloured women‟s lives and identity in the East Cape, Port Elizabeth and the NMBM. The study includes select readings of literary theory and South African fiction from which examples were chosen to illustrate the longevity of stereotypes attached to coloured women‟s identity. Commemorative narrative highlights the role coloured women played and continue to play as their alternative histories or counter narratives embed alternative histories in group identity. A comparative historical analysis of racist and gendered policies and practices contextualises the social construction of coloured women‟s identity from the colonial period to the present time and a focus group discussion among ten female evictees from South End and Richmond ] Hill in Port Elizabeth (PE) generated rich details of coloured women‟s lives and experience in Port Elizabeth and the NMBM. Findings are captured in four themes: Living, Loving and Laughing; Religion and Resistance; Hardship and Trauma and Identity and Ambivalence. These themes highlight nostalgia, courage and humour; the special role played by religious affiliation and coloured people‟s successful resistance to the demolition and deconsecration of places of worship in PE together with pride and a sense of achievement which continues to influence coloured women‟s political identity in the NMBM. Police brutality, everyday racism and sexism, the impact of apartheid on matriculants and the influence of petty apartheid on coloured women‟s lives and identity, as well as participants‟ contradictory perceptions of their post-apartheid social and political identity which continue to be defined by a deficit discourse, are discussed and described in Chapter 4. Focus Group findings locate coloured women‟s identity in a milieu of racist and gendered laws, policies and practices. It is suggested that sexualised stereotypes of coloured women‟s commodification and second class status persist regardless of the South African transition to a constitutional democracy. Evidence is presented of coloured women as bounded storytellers who create a counter narrative to apartheid justification of forced removals.It is suggested that the counter narrative is a vehicle for group support, affirmation and the recovery of roots, identity and post apartheid heritage including records and memorabilia displayed in the South End Museum. As the field is under-researched it is recommended that further research should be conducted to include studies of the social and political identity of an expanded sample of coloured women representative of diverse ages and backgrounds in the rural and urban areas of South Africa.
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- Date Issued: 2012