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

University of Fort Hare

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.

Key Words: activism • emancipatory theory • feminism • South African psychology

Theory & Psychology, Vol. 16, No. 3, 367-389 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0959354306064284


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				C. Macleod IV. `Who? What?': An Uninducted View of Towards a New Psychology of Women from Post-Apartheid South Africa Feminism Psychology, August 1, 2008; 18(3): 347 - 357. [PDF]

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