Silencing racialised shame and normalising respectability in “coloured” men’s discourses of partner violence against women in Cape Town, South Africa

Abstract

This paper explores how shame is constructed in working-class “coloured” men’s talk about their violence against women partners in Cape Town, South Africa. It examines how men who are violent toward their partners attempt to dissociate from their shamed identities and their perpetration of violence at the intersection of their gender, race and class identities, and how these processes allow men to produce subjectivities as “respectable coloured” men. Ten individual interviews were conducted with men who had perpetrated violence against their partner(s) residing in a predominantly working-class “coloured” community on the peripheries of Cape Town, South Africa. A Foucauldian discourse analysis tracks the complicated processes followed by men in dissociating from shamed subjectivities towards ones that encompass pride. The men talk about the battle for subjectivity in their pursuit for a “respectable”, “good” masculinity, which is commended in specific pro-feminist spaces while being reportedly questioned or denounced by their fellow community members. The article concludes by considering the usefulness of shame in this sample of South African “coloured” men, and its capacity to mobilise men towards a pro-feminist politics.