Photovoice as a narrative tool for decolonization: Black women and LGBT student experiences at UCT
Abstract
Decolonization is a key term in the current higher education crisis across South African universities as student movements are advocating for free decolonized education. In this paper, I explore how Photovoice research, as a narrative approach combined with participatory action methods, can engage a group of black, working-class, and LGBT students at the University of Cape Town (UCT) to explore their daily experiences on campus in relation to the call for decolonization. Findings demonstrate how naming decolonization allows students to locate their own experiences within a context of power relations and expose alienating institutional legacies. Of particular relevance are the experiences of students of diverse gendered identities whose daily struggles are often rendered invisible through multiple bureaucratic and cultural assumptions. Students spoke about the violence of institutional spaces, the policing of their bodies and the silencing of alternative ways of knowing and doing.
References
Alexander, M. J. 2005 Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations of Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred. Durham: Duke University Press.
Bilodeau, B. L. 2009. Genderism: Transgender students, binary systems and higher education. Saarbrücken, Germany: Verlag Dr. Müller.
Boonzaier, F. 2014 Talking against dominance. South African women resisting donminant discourse in narratives of violence. In Creating Counter-Stories: Women Voicing Resistance, ed. M.N. Lafrance and S. McKenzie-Mohr, 102-120. New-York: Routledge.
Boonzaier, F. and Mkhize (under review) Bodies out of place: Black queer students negotiating identity at the University Of Cape Town. South African Journal of Higher Education (this issue).
Brydon-Miller, M. 1997. Participatory action research: Psychology and social change. Journal of Social Issues, 35(4): 657-666.
Catalani, C and Minkler, M. 2010. Photovoice: A review of the literature in health and public health. Health, Education and Behavior, 37(3): 424-451.
Cloete, N. 2002. Policy expectations. In Transformation in higher education: Global pressures and local realities in South Africa, ed. N. Cloete, R. Fehnel, P. Maassen, T. Moja, H. Perold, and T. Gibbon, 87-108. Cape Town: Juta.
Cornell, J. and Kessi, S. 2016. Black students’ experiences of transformation at a previously “white only” South African university: A photovoice study. Ethnic and Racial Studies. DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2016.1206586.
Crenshaw, K. 1994. Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. In The Public Nature of Private Violence, ed. M.A. Fineman and R. Mykitiuk, 93-118. New-York: Routledge.
Collins, P.H. 2000 Black feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (2nd Edition). New-York: Routledge.
Davies, C.B. 2014. Pan‐Africanism, transnational black feminism and the limits of culturalist analyses in African gender discourses. Feminist Africa, 19: 78‐93.
Fanon, F. 1986. Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto Press (1952-French).
Freire, P. (1970) The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin.
Garvey, J. C. and S. R. Rankin. 2015. The influence of campus experiences on the level of outness among trans-spectrum and queer-spectrum students. Journal of Homosexuality, 62: 374 – 393.
Gordon, L. 2015. Race and justice in higher education: Some global challenges with attention to the South African context. In Being at Home: Race, Institutional Culture and Transformation at South African Higher Education Institutions, ed. P. Tabensky and S. Matthews, 157-183. Pietermaritzburg: UKZN Press.
Hall, S. (1990) Cultural identity and diaspora. In Rutherford, J. (Ed.) Identity, Community, Culture, Difference. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Hames, M. 2007. Sexual identity and transformation at a South African university. Social Dynamics, 33(1): 52 – 77.
Howarth, C. and Andreouli, E. 2017).The Social Psychology of Everyday Politics. London and New-York: Routledge.
Hook, D. 2004. Fanon and the psychoanalysis of racism. In Critical Psychology , ed. D. Hook, N. Mkhize, P. Kiguwa, A. Collins, E. Burman and I. Parker, 115-138. Cape Town: UCT Press.
Jones, M. 2012. “UCT Unable to Accept only Top Matriculants.” Cape Times. March
Retrieved on 6 June 2017: http://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/uct-unable-to-accept-only-top-matriculants-1261460
Kessi, S. and Boonzaier, F. 2017. Resistance and transformation in postcolonial contexts. In The Social Psychology of Everyday Politics., ed. C. Howarth and E. Andreouli, 116-130. London and New-York: Routledge..
Kessi, S. and Cornell, J. 2015. Coming to UCT: Black students, transformation and discourses of race. Journal of Student Affairs in Africa, 3(2), 1–16. DOI: 10.14426/jsaa.v3i2.132.
Lewis, D. 2011. Representing African sexualities. In African Sexualities , ed. S. Tamale, 199-216. Oxford: Tumibuka Press.
Maldonado-Torres, N. 2016. Outline of Ten These on Coloniality and Decoloniality. Retrieved from Foundation Frantz Fanon: http://frantzfanonfoundation-fondationfrantzfanon.com/article2360.html
Mama, A. 1997. Sheroes and villains: Conceptualizing colonial and contemporary violence against women in Africa. In Feminist Genealogies, Colonial legacies, Democratic Futures, ed. M.J. Alexander and C.T. Mohanty, 46-62. New-York and London: Routledge.
Matandela, M. 2015. Rhodes Must Fall: How Black Women Claimed Their Place. Mail and Guardian, 30 March 2015. Retrieved 6 June 2017: https://mg.co.za/article/2015-03-30-rhodes-must-fall-how-black-women-claimed-their-place
Matebeni, Z. 2015. Sexual minorities in South Africa. In International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences, 2nd Edition, Volume 21, ed. J.D. Wright, 744-749. Oxford: Elsevier.
Mazrui, A. 2005. Pan-africanism and the intellectuals. In African intellectuals: Rethinking Politics, Language, Gender, and Development, ed. T. Mkandawire, 56-77. Dakar: CODESRIA Books and London and New-York: Zed Books.
McKinney, J. S. 2005. On the margins: A study of the experiences of transgender college students. Journal of Gay and Lesbian Issues in Education 3(1): 63-75.
Mkhize, N., Bennet, J., Reddy, V. and Moletsane, R. 2010. The country we want to live in: Hate crimes and homophobia in the lives of black lesbian South Africans. Pretoria: HSRC Press.
Msibi, T. 2013. Queering transformation in higher education. Perspectives in Education, 31(2): 65-141.
Msibi, T. and V. Jagessar. 2015. Restricted freedom: Negotiating same-sex identifications in the residential spaces of a South African university. Higher Education Research and Development 34(4): 750–762.
Murray, M. 2000. Levels of Narrative Analysis in Health Psychology. Journal of Health Psychology, 5(2): 337-347.
Mwikya, K. 2014. Unnatural and Un-African: Contesting queer-phobia by Africa’s political leadership. Feminist Africa, 19: 98-105.
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. 2013. Decolonizing the University in Africa. The Thinker, 51.
Ndebele, N. 2016. They are Burning Memory. University of Johannesburg, 17 September 2016. Retrieved on line at: http://www.njabulondebele.co.za/2016/09/they-are-burning-memory/
Nyamjoh, F. 2012. ‘Potted plants in greenhouses’: A critical reflection on the resilience of colonial education in Africa. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 47(2): 129-154.
Ratele, K. 2009. Apartheid, anti-apartheid and post-apartheid sexualities. In The Prize and The Price: shaping sexualities in South Africa, ed. M. Steyn and M. van Zyl, 290-305. HSRC Press.
Rankin, S. R. 2003. Campus climate for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people: A national perspective. New York, NY: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute.
Read, B., Archer, L., & Leathwood, C. 2003. Challenging cultures? Student conceptions of ‘belonging’ and ‘isolation’ at a post-1992 university. Studies in Higher Education, 28(3): 261-277. DOI: 10.1080/03075070309290.
Riessman, C. K. 2008. Narrative Methods For The Human Sciences. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
Said, E. 1993. Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage.
Seelman, K. L. 2014. Recommendations of transgender students, staff, and faculty in the USA for improving college campuses. Gender and Education 26(6): 618-635.
Sennett, J., Finchilescu, G., Gibson, K., & Strauss, R. 2003. Adjustment of black students at historically white South African university. Educational Psychology, 23(1): 107-116. DOI: 10.1080/01443410303219.
Soudien, C., Michaels, W., Mthembi-Mahanyele, S., Nkomo, N., Nyanda, G., and Nyoka, N. 2008. Report of the Ministerial Committee on transformation and social cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions. Pretoria: Department of Education.
Walker, M. 2005. Race is nowhere and race is everywhere: Narratives from black and white South African university students in post-apartheid South Africa. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 26(1): 41-54. DOI: 10.1080/13613320500110501.
Wang, C. and M. A. Burris. 1997. Photovoice: Concept, methodology, and use for participatory needs assessment. Health education & behavior 24(3): 369-387
Woods, R. L. 2001. “Oh sorry, I’m a racist”: Black student experiences at the University of Witwatersrand. In Apartheid no more: Case studies of South African universities in the process of transformation, ed. R. O. Mabokela, K. L. King and R. F. Arnove, 91-110. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.
Copyright (c) 2018 Shose Kessi
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This journal is an open access journal, and the authors and journal should be properly acknowledged, when works are cited.
Authors, copyright holders, may use the publishers version for teaching purposes, in books, theses, dissertations, conferences and conference papers.
A copy of the authors' publishers version may also be hosted on the following websites:
- Non-commercial personal homepage or blog.
- Institutional webpage.
- Authors Institutional Repository.
The following notice should accompany such a posting on the website: This is an electronic version of an article published in SAJHE, Volume XXX, number XXX, pages XXX “XXX", DOI. Authors should also supply a hyperlink to the original paper or indicate where the original paper (http://www.journals.ac.za/index.php/SAJHE) may be found.
Authors publishers version, affiliated with the Stellenbosch University will be automatically deposited in the University Institutional Repository SUNScholar.
Articles as a whole, may not be re-published with another journal.
The following license applies:
Attribution CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
