Abstract
For many years, Psychology literature has shied away from examining gender issues from a critical perspective in which women’s well-being is connected to how they are treated by the structures within which they exist. While there has been a substantial literature about feminism and psychology internationally, in South Africa numerous contributions started making their way into publications in the 1990s. The notion of feminism and psychology within South Africa has been an issue for debate and reflection among feminist scholars such as de la Rey (1997), and Potgieter and de la Rey (1997) to name a few. However, despite their important work, it appears as if feminism has made little progress in South African psychology in the 20th century (see Macleod, 2004). While the space has been less than inviting, voices from the margins have continued to echo and call for spaces for those who were previously silenced. With this in mind, the present paper, which will be in the form of a conversation between two feminist psychology scholars, will look at how we continuously attempt to navigate our discipline looking for possibilities and a re-imagining of psychology. By sharing our experiences, struggles, challenges, and views on feminism and psychology within South Africa, we hope to offer some reflections of our personal journeys within the discipline. Peace: My entry point into feminism in the discipline began with my mentorship with an established colleague. I was a postgraduate student at the time. Reading the works of South African feminist scholars at the time influenced my thinking. Most of these works were focused on gender, race and … psychology’s neglect of gender. The idea began to form in my head about the many gaps in the discipline and issues affecting me and people like me that were not visible in the mainstream: as black women, black African women, or black lesbian women. Part of my discovery was that exploring these feminist issues meant going outside of psychology. Puleng: I think we have some similarities in terms of how we started. I started as a young psychology student strugglling to read books prescribed to us because of the many taken-for granted issues in the theories we had to learn, and what I mean here is that in my first year, I was exposed to theories and theorists whose work I could not relate to (I am talking about Freud, Skinner, Bandura, Jung, Adler, to name a few). While these were meant to introduce us to the discipline of psychology and for us to understand what it was all about, their relevance to our context/everyday lives was not emphasized nor discussed. We were made to learn and absorb that which we were being taught. The space for critical thinking was almost non-existent. Peace: And now as we talk, I think of the significant people that have steered us on this path. Ironically for me it’s been quite a number of black feminist scholars outside of the discipline. But within the discipline it’s been different. My mentorship has been under the rubric of both white male and female mentors. Throughout my undergraduate and postgraduate study, I have not had black female mentorship. And quite simply this was due to the lack of black female presence in the academy at the time. Puleng: I think reflecting on the historical period during which I started my university studies would be relevant. I enrolled for my university studies at a previously Whites only university shortly after the first South African democratic elections which resulted in such universities opening up their doors to non-Whites. So, for me the struggles that one had to contend with in class were not isolated or divorced from those that were outside the confines of the university walls. I can then relate to the challenges associated with mentorship as you describe. There were no black academics in the department of psychology at that time. The space I found myself in was both foreign and uncomfortable. I was almost “forced” to notice race and start thinking about issues of race. And of course, discussions of race issues, or even gender or class for that matter were not part of the “mainstream psychology” curricula. Peace: … Yes, that has been my experience in my department as well. Students who opt for research topics that are not considered sufficiently “mainstream psychology” and lumped as “political” topics like race, gender, sexuality are forced into a kind of ‘ghettoized’ culture, if you will. Certain topics are assumed to be foci of specific people, not because of their expertise but because of their identities. So black supervisors can only supervise “black” issues, and so on … I think it is also indicative of broader disciplinary issues and not just departmental. Certain issues or topics become part of the margins … and I think that is also one of the central ways that feminist and gender issues have been engaged with within South African psychology particularly … also, the academic visibility of the 1990s is not always evident in the current climate. Have you noticed that? Puleng: Yes I have noticed, and am uncertain as to the reasons for this. Once again when we look at the historical period when this shift happened we will realize that it was during the transition period from apartheid to democracy in South Africa. For a long time “mainstream psychology” never offered space for the critical engagement and application of theories to everyday experiences. I would to some extent argue that using the critical feminist lens within the discipline assisted in the problematizing of the taken for granted theories and epistemologies used to make sense of lived experiences. This critical perspective was not welcomed with warm hands and therefore never given a platform within many psychology departments and journals. Feminist psychology research continues to struggle to find a home within psychology journals. Peace: Yes, there are quite a few critical journals in South Africa, and Southern Africa that actively promote feminist research and work but, like you say, these are not psychology journals. It's a difficult issue, this, that also goes back to curriculum issues. And I find that this lack of exposure to gender issues in their undergraduate study makes it somewhat difficult for mentorship in feminist psychology. The students are not really interested in this thing called “feminist psychology”; they have no idea what it is and why it is. Puleng: I could not agree with you more. Peace: Thinking about some of the challenges, one of my biggest challenges has not even been about feminism and psychology. It's been about the kinds of conversations that happen between feminists … This has come about in the subtle distinctions between “academic feminists” and “activist feminists” in the field … and I have come to gradually accept my own positioning—both by myself and others—as “academic feminist”… I have recently started working with feminist activists, and I have come to appreciate the divide that certainly does exist between us. I realize we don’t really talk with each other … there are epistemological and other issues that we are not able to fully address because of our different orientations. Puleng: Yes, the issue of “language!” The expectations and requirements of our academic institutions lead to various forms of exclusion. While as academics we might be “fighting” the same fight as activists outside the confines of the ivory tower, we are limited and are constantly under surveillance by the universities we represent and work under. This for me is one of the reasons that led to this “divide” that you speak of. We often work with communities, collaborate with them, and generate information/knowledge that will hopefully be beneficial to us all. What often happens in reality; however, is that the knowledge that gets generated ends up in journals that most of our collaborators cannot access, understand, or use. So, for whose benefit are we doing this job? How can we bridge this gap without getting into trouble with our institutional ethical committees? I think we need to look for ways in which people can be the authors of their lives and have a platform for self-expression … where we do the work together. Peace: That is so true. I think now of a project I am currently involved in with young LGBTI youth on sexual reproductive health issues. It is a Stepping Stones project in collaboration with the African Gender Institute. My colleague and I have run a series of focus group workshops with this group of young people on different interrelated themes on sex behavior, identity, and other issues. I remember feeling quite surprised by and distant from the rigid representations of sexual identity in terms of who was a “top” and a “bottom” and what these identifications meant for the different negotiations of space and self in a relationship. As a feminist, I felt that this was a re-inscription of heteronormative content. Anyway, as part of a collaborative effort, I decided to share my written reflection with the group and they all strongly felt that my reading of the practice was misguided, that the practice was in fact not a re-inscription of the heteronormative but rather strategic forms of resistance and survival. In fact, they thought such labeling of the heteronormative was characteristic of so-called “academic elitism” … I thought that was an interesting reminder to me. Puleng: That is an excellent example of assumptions that we normally make because we usually don’t go back and say, “This is what I am saying. Do you agree”? Instead, we write and then we go publish and say, “This is what it means”… Peace: … True. And I realize just how much we are out of touch with the young generation of activists, scholars, and the youth more generally. How do we form mentorships? Puleng: … The mentor-mentee relationship should be about learning from each other I guess, and not one teaching the other. And if we look at it that way, we may acknowledge each other’s viewpoints. I think these conversations, these struggles, need space in the classrooms and not only in publications. As teachers/academics we have the opportunity to create uncomfortable spaces where students can be stretched out of their comfort zones. Peace: Very much so. And I have only really been able to interrogate these issues with others in the classroom actually. The work I do with feminist NGOs like the African Gender Institute is work that I bring into psychology and my classroom … Puleng: We have the space to do that, and I think we should use it. While we are sometimes faced with resentment and a refusal to acknowledge the lenses we use in our teaching and practice, we should not perceive this challenge as a barrier to bringing about a rethinking within psychology classrooms.
Where to …?
This conversation aimed at highlighting the ways in which we engage with, trouble, and wrestle with being feminist psychology scholars within spaces that have predetermined ways of doing things. We deem the persistent uncritical acceptance of mainstream psychology which assumes objectivity and universality problematic as it neglects and fails to acknowledge the raced, gendered, political, social, and economic aspects that influence how people understand and make sense of their lived experiences. In a country like South Africa that continues to be plagued by remnants of its violent historical past, contextual theorizing is pertinent. The continuous isolated nature of the academic space renders voices from the margins illegitimate. The refusal to acknowledge multiple ways of knowing is a violent act against those whose knowledge is rendered irrelevant/unimportant. As we continue to navigate ourselves in these academic spaces within South Africa, we cannot disconnect ourselves from the past that contributed in the exclusion of many Black faces in academia. We find ourselves playing “catch-up” as a result of a system that intentionally excluded us from participating in intellectual spaces. Feminist psychology continues to be marginalized which contributes to the limited number of publications within psychology journals. The call for relevance or what has been termed the “relevance debate” in South African psychology has been articulated through calls to make the discipline more attentive and responsive to social issues within the country (see, amongst others, Macleod, 2004; Macleod & Howell, 2013; Painter, Kiguwa, & Böhmke, 2013; Sher & Long, 2012). A reflection of the country’s tumultuous ideological history and knowledge production within South African psychology remains contingent on complex and at times contradictory engagements by researchers positioned within often rigid and dominating communities of practice. While some researchers such as Cooper and Nicholas (2012) applaud a “transformed discipline [that sets] the tone for a psychology that reflects social concerns” (p. 100) others such as Kiguwa and Langa (2011) and Callaghan (2006) argue that the discipline remains unresponsive to feminist and activist engagements that should mark a psychology of an “actual, living society” (Ratele & Duncan, 2003, p. 12). We believe that this remains a pressing concern for the academy. In acknowledging and highlighting these challenges, we show the work that still needs to be done.