Radical Plural Feminisms and Emancipatory Practice in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

Despite ten years of democracy, gross inequities continue to permeate South African society, implying the need for emancipatory theory and practice. Furthermore, despite a minority critical voice, South African psychology, as elsewhere, has been a generally conservative discipline. In this paper I explore how a radical plural feminism provides a resource for liberatory theory/practice. Drawing on Foucauldian discourse and postcolonial insights, this framework performs a ‘both/and’ (rather than an ‘either/or’) function in the theorizing and practice of diversity/unity and micro/macro-level politics. This theory is installed in practice through intellectual activism. Intellectual activism implies in this context: refusing abstractions that pre-define who one is, while at the same time strategically deploying plural identities around contingent issues; working in the bordersites of dominant understandings; identifying, communicating and acting upon transversal relations of commonality; identifying and inhabiting the contradictions and disparities contained in dominant and oppressive discourses; and being constantly vigilant and reflective in terms of self, other, context, process, assumptions and theory.