Conceptions of Freedom in Contemporary South African Feminisms
This dissertation is a philosophical exploration of the formulation, convergence and divergence of conceptions of freedom1 in selected contemporary South African feminisms. I engage critically with concepts and conceptions that I identify as dominant within the feminisms underpinning the South Afric...
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| Médium: | Dissertation |
| Jazyk: | English |
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ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
01.01.2021
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| ISBN: | 9798762152037 |
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| Shrnutí: | This dissertation is a philosophical exploration of the formulation, convergence and divergence of conceptions of freedom1 in selected contemporary South African feminisms. I engage critically with concepts and conceptions that I identify as dominant within the feminisms underpinning the South African women’s movement. To this end, I analyse the most prominent feminist strands in contemporary South Africa, which I group according to their respective agendas.2 The four main groupings that I identify and analyse are the nationalist women’s movement (women empowerment), liberal feminism (gender equality), black feminism (intersectionality), and postcolonial feminism (decolonisation).My overarching aim is two-fold – first, to demonstrate how the nationalist women’s movement and the liberal feminists are entrenched in the binary view of freedom conceptualised by Isaiah Berlin – a testament, I think, to their immersion in a political philosophy steeped in Western modernity.3 Second, I show how, on the contrary, black feminists and postcolonial feminists are able to move beyond the binary way of understanding freedom – as either positive freedom or negative freedom.The four chapters of this dissertation are an analysis of the respective feminist groupings, their ideologies, mobilisation strategies, and political demands. I show how the agenda of each feminist strand can either be linked to Berlin’s binary conception of freedom and/or responses to that conception. My analysis is original in the literature to date as far as I am aware, as no other study has provided an analysis of the underlying assumptions regarding freedom in these four feminist groupings. An analysis of this kind is important because it helps with an understanding of freedom concepts, theories, approaches and values in a particular landscape, where a number of perspectives coexist. So, it is of great utility to map out where these different conceptualisations of freedom diverge and converge in the interests of mutual understanding.An Overview of the Literature Mine is a philosophical study on the concept of freedom underpinning South African feminisms. However, because there are very few philosophical works that focus on feminism and freedom in South Africa, the literature that I consult is multidisciplinary. I draw on texts in the fields of political, moral and social philosophy, and also on literature from the disciplines of political science, sociology, historiography, anthropology and the humanities in general. I also employ historical documentary narratives, government pieces of legislation and policy documents, interviews, poetry and lyrics to develop my position.My study is based on four main texts that are foundational to the four kinds of freedom conceptions that I identify in the four South African feminist groupings, respectively. The primary text of significance for my study is Berlin’s “Two Concepts of liberty” in his Four Essays on Liberty (1969). Throughout this dissertation I cite the original essay that is republished in Liberty - Isaiah Berlin - Incorporating Four Essays on Liberty (2002), which is compiled and edited by Henry Hardy.4 Berlin maintains that there are two dominant concepts of freedom that are predominant in the Western philosophical tradition – positive and negative freedom (Berlin 2002: 169). |
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| Bibliografia: | SourceType-Dissertations & Theses-1 ObjectType-Dissertation/Thesis-1 content type line 12 |
| ISBN: | 9798762152037 |