AN EXISTENTIAL- STANDPOINT READING OF SOUTH AFRICAN BLACKWOMEN’S AUTOBIOGRAPHIES UNDER APARTHEID

Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Manzini, Zinhle
- Graduate Program:
- Philosophy
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 14, 2024
- Committee Members:
- Sarah Miller, Program Head/Chair
Nancy Tuana, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Ariane Cruz, Outside Unit & Field Member
Robert Bernasconi, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Kris Sealey, Major Field Member
Gabeba Baderoon, Special Member - Keywords:
- Apartheid
Blackwomen
Autobiography
South Africa
Black Feminism
Sartre
Fanon
Biko
Ramphele
Makhoere
Collins
existential-standpoint - Abstract:
- It is generally known that Apartheid in South Africa was an oppressive system. However, the intelligibility of it as such and our philosophical approaches to Apartheid as the systematized oppression of a people with multiple and intersecting identities remains undertheorized. Consequently, the system’s complexities remain unknown. In this dissertation, I argue that prioritizing the lived experience of Black women makes the system intelligible. To achieve this objective, I use the autobiographies of two South African Black women who were actively involved in the anti-Apartheid movement as a resource, namely Caesarina Kona Makhoere’s No Child’s Play: In Prison Under Apartheid (1988) and Mamphela Ramphele’s Mamphela Ramphele: A Life (1995). To further this aim, I draw from Frantz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre’s political existentialist philosophies, which argue that racism is a system best revealed by a politically conscious and praxis-oriented lived experience. I show how Steve Biko’s thinking augments Fanon and Sartre’s brief reference to Apartheid South Africa. I introduce Black feminist standpoint theory as a crucial addition that illuminates the intersections of race/class/gender as articulated by Patricia Hill Collins. Drawing from existentialism and (Black) feminist standpoint, I argue that Fanon, Sartre, Collins, Biko, Ramphele, and Makhoere, when read together, give rise to what I refer to as an “existential-standpoint,” which articulates a situated, concrete account of racism as a system, with interlocking structures of oppression. I argue that the system is best revealed by a revolutionary praxis.