Citizenship and social status in Miriam Tlali's Muriel at Metropolitan.

An intersectional feminist stance was reflected in South African literary texts as early as the 1970s. Miriam Tlali's pioneering work Muriel at Metropolitan (1975), for example, explores how black women are most palpably confronted with intersecting oppressions and inequalities because of mutually r...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Tydskrif vir Letterkunde Vol. 61; no. 1; pp. 35 - 46
Autor principal: Tuytens, Lieselot
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 2024
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
fields @attributes:
  recordID: 1
pdfLink:
plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=178841544&site=ehost-live
header:
  @attributes:
    shortDbName: hlh
    uiTerm: 178841544
    longDbName: Humanities International Complete
    uiTag: AN
  controlInfo:
    bkinfo:
    jinfo:
      jid:
        0041476X
        162I
      jtl: Tydskrif vir Letterkunde
      issn: 0041476X
      maglogo: N
    pubinfo:
      dt: 2024
      vid: 61
      iid: 1
      pid: 71603
      pub: Tydskrif vir Letterkunde
    artinfo:
      ui:
        178841544
        10.17159/tl.v61i1.16064
      ppf: 35
      ppct: 11
      formats:
        fmt:
          @attributes:
            type: P
            size: 1.4MB
      tig:
        atl: Citizenship and social status in Miriam Tlali's Muriel at Metropolitan.
      aug:
        au: Tuytens, Lieselot
        affil:
          PhD researcher affiliated to the Dutch section of the Department of Literary Studies, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Ghent, Belgium
          Member of the Ghent Centre for Afrikaans and the Study of South Africa at Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
      su:
        Citizenship
        Social status
        Feminism
        Feminists
        Apartheid
      sug:
        subj:
          Citizenship
          Social status
          Feminism
          Feminists
          Apartheid
      keyword:
        African Customary Law
        apartheid
        citizenship
        intersectionality
        Miriam Tlali
        social status
      ab: An intersectional feminist stance was reflected in South African literary texts as early as the 1970s. Miriam Tlali's pioneering work Muriel at Metropolitan (1975), for example, explores how black women are most palpably confronted with intersecting oppressions and inequalities because of mutually reinforcing axes of race, ethnicity, gender, and class. These social categories provided the basis to differentiate groups from each other and were utilised to produce unequal power relations. Such inequalities were not only created by the apartheid regime, but also by African Customary Law, although the latter was subject to the twin influences of colonialism and apartheid. In this article I analyse five key passages of the novel through an intersectional lens by looking into the correlation between these systems, intersectional axes, citizenship, and social status. The close reading of the extracts shows that the characters' civil rights are curtailed, and their social status reduced through inter alia dehumanising stereotypes, racial and gendered naming strategies, and polarising pronouns. Furthermore, the discursive counterreactions of the black female protagonist Muriel are charted. These consist of rational argumentation, norm-breaking, objectification, and distancing techniques. Her retorts represent her resistance against multiple subjugations and take the shape of what is now called intersectional feminism(s).
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
    refInfo:
    copyright:
      @attributes:
        flag: Y
      custom: Copyright of Tydskrif vir Letterkunde is the property of Tydskrif vir Letterkunde and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
      item: Tydskrif vir Letterkunde
      holder: Tydskrif vir Letterkunde
      dt:
        @attributes:
          year: 2024
    holdings:
      @attributes:
        islocal: N