Mother, daughter, sister, wife? interogating construction of South African Indian women's Identity – a study of South African Indian women playwrights and our plays.
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Date
2022
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Abstract
This thesis interrogates the gendered constructions and representations of Indian
South African women (ISAW), South African Indian women (SAIW), and/or South African
women of Indian descent’s (SAWOID) identity through a study of such playwrights and their
plays, including my own work. ISAW, SAIW and/or SAWOID lives are critically affected by
the roles we are expected to perform in our families, namely those of daughter, sister, wife,
and mother. Sylvia Walby (1990) distinguishes two key forms of patriarchy: public and
private. Such a differentiation is particularly relevant to ISAW, SAIW and/or SAWOID who
have long been confined to the private domain in South African Indian (SAI) communities
and families for the purposes of patriarchal and cultural preservation (Govender, 1999, 2001).
Thus, although great strides have been made in ISAW, SAIW and/or SAWOID’s lives,
traditional patriarchal roles remain entrenched (Rajab, 2011).
Theatre, particularly in this study playwriting, offers SAIW like myself, an
empowering public space to articulate our own subject positions (Govender, 2001). The study
therefore adopts an autoethnographic and practice-based research (PaR) approach,
methodological modes that are rooted in each individual’s creativity and experiences.
Autoethnography and PaR connect in my thesis through the play I have written and directed
as a primary part of this study, Devi (2019). Furthermore, the research explores the theatrical
work of ISAW, SAIW and/or SAWOID through a reflexive thematic analysis of interviews
with selected playwrights and a textual analysis of their selected plays. In undertaking such a
study, I unpack the politics of identity construction through a feminist poststructural
framework. Principally, I assert that Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs), as conceptualised
by French philosopher Louis Althusser (1971, 2006), especially those of family, religion and
culture, are powerful ideological constructs. These ISAs strongly shape our experiences and
the construction of our identities, which paradoxically, are both personally chosen but also
socially regulated (Hall, 1997; Weedon, 1997; 2004). As a SAIW playwright, I am critically
examining the specificity of the SAI (diasporic) community and how we continue to maintain
traditional patriarchal values postcolonialism and post-apartheid. The often marginalised yet
vital voices of ISAW, SAIW and/or SAWOID playwrights challenge the predominant
patriarchally embedded socio-cultural practices of SAI communities and families, offering a
dynamic “re-representation of brown female identity” (Naicker, 2017: 39).
Description
Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.