Silencing racialised shame and normalising respectability in “coloured” men’s discourses of partner violence against women in Cape Town,South Africa

Abstract

This paper explores how shame is constructed in working-class “coloured” men’s talk about their violence against women partners in Cape Town, South Africa. It examines how men who are violent toward their partners attempt to dissociate from their shamed identities and their perpetration of violence at the intersection of their gender, race and class identities, and how these processes allow men to produce subjectivities as “respectable coloured” men. Ten individual interviews were conducted with men who had perpetrated violence against their partner(s) residing in a predominantly working-class “coloured” community on the peripheries of Cape Town, South Africa. A Foucauldian discourse analysis tracks the complicated processes followed by men in dissociating from shamed subjectivities towards ones that encompass pride. The men talk about the battle for subjectivity in their pursuit for a “respectable”, “good” masculinity, which is commended in specific pro-feminist spaces while being reportedly questioned or denounced by their fellow community members. The article concludes by considering the usefulness of shame in this sample of South African “coloured” men, and its capacity to mobilise men towards a pro-feminist politics.

Keywords

“coloured” identities partner-violent men respectability shame South Africa

An introductory note on colouredness and positionality

In this paper, I explore how shame is constructed in a group of working-class “coloured”¹ men’s talk about their violence against women partners in Cape Town, South Africa. I address two key problematics in this paper related to the silencing of discourses of racialised shame in the context of colouredness and the meanings this has for “coloured” partner-violent men geographically located in a global southern post-colonial context. Exposed to “conditions of postcoloniality” (Wicomb, 1998, p. 92), I understand the men to carry a history of oppression, dispossession, and shame through their embodiment of pathologising stereotypes whilst additionally being encouraged to feel shame in response to their perpetration of violence.

The precarity of “coloured” identities and the historical traumas that have shaped pathological discourses of colouredness continues to be problematic for some people who identify as “coloured”. The South African term “coloured” refers to the diverse group of individuals argued to hold their origins in a range of ethnic groups, from Cape slaves, the indigenous Khoisan population to “other people of African and Asian descent who had been assimilated into Cape colonial society by the late nineteenth century” (Adhikari, 2006, p. 468). As partial descendants from European settlers, “coloured” people have often been perceived of as “mixed race”, holding intermediate status between the historically dominant white minority and the substantial African² population (Erasmus, 2001). In the South African context, colouredness has often times been categorised under the political banner of blackness due to anti-apartheid struggles; however, the experience of “coloured” identities and feelings of shame associated with the identity require a more specific analysis.

“Coloured” identities during the period of slavery and apartheid South Africa were defined by a number of features, including negative portrayals and shame attached to “miscegenation”, and the strong emotional ties to whiteness and the belief of western ideologies as superior (Adhikari, 2005). Colonial and apartheid discourses positioned colouredness as a “colonial mistake” and instilled the identity with discourses of sexual impropriety and immorality (Erasmus, 2001; Wicomb, 1998). It was positioned in terms of “‘lack’ or taint, or in terms of a ‘remainder’” (Erasmus, 2001, p. 17), and these ideas were often internalised by “coloured” people, reinforcing shameful perceptions of impurity (and “sin”) through racial hybridity.

South African scholarship on responses to and accounts of partner-violence against women in the context of marginalised “coloured”, working-class communities in Cape Town is in existence (e.g. Van Niekerk & Boonzaier, 2016; Salo, 2007). However, the complexities behind how “coloured” men find themselves shamed not only through their perpetration of violence but also through their identities of colouredness requires further inquiry, especially as it relates to their meanings for the attainment of non-violent masculinities that encompass pride and that counter feelings of shame.

This paper emerges out of my personal experiences as a “coloured” cisgender woman, born and bred in the Western Cape Province in South Africa, and as a decolonial African feminist researcher with an interest in the precarity of “coloured” masculinities in post-colonial contexts and the perpetration of partner-violence. These varied positionings have brought to my attention the problematic ways in which public and research discourse have positioned poor “coloured” – and more broadly black³ – masculinities as homogenised, pathologised and conflated with criminality, locating their very identities as risk factors for becoming perpetrators of violence against women (see, for example, Boonzaier, 2018; Morrell, Jewkes, & Lindegger, 2012; Shefer, 2016). My growing discomfort with these discourses of risk provides further motivation for this paper. I problematise the decontextualising and ahistorical aspects of such discourses and their failure to acknowledge how historical traumas and oppressions may have shaped black masculinities located in post-colonial contexts and marginalised through “race” and class. The dangers of transporting global northern theories to understand and intervene with partner-violent men in the Global South are additionally interrogated (see Boonzaier & Van Niekerk, 2018; McCloskey, Boonzaier, Steinbrenner, & Hunter, 2016). As the current database and foundations of research on domestically violent men and shame largely emerge from the Global North (e.g. Braithwaite, 1989; Scheff, 2003; Gottzén, 2016, 2017), there is a need to advance theorising on shame and partner-violent men in a global southern post-colonial context, such as South Africa, where divisions of gender, race, class, histories, and locations cannot be imagined outside their complex interplay with each other. I position this paper on intersectional work with “coloured” partner-violent men within the rich and developing body of South African scholarship on masculinities and emotion. I use this work as a point of departure in noting how the history of negative emotions and politics in South Africa, but also heteropatriarchy, shape the experience of black masculinities (Biko, 2004; Ratele, 2013a).

In this paper, I explore how shame is constructed in working-class “coloured” men’s discourses of their violence against women partners in Cape Town, South Africa. The article engages with the entanglement of stigmatising discourses that shame working-class “coloured” men through their race and class identities, as well as through their identities as heterosexual domestically-violent men. Important insights have been generated thus far from local and international feminist scholarship dedicated to interrogating the ways in which men minimise and justify their violence against partners (Adams, Towns, & Gavey, 1995; Hearn, 1998; Lau & Stevens, 2012; Van Niekerk & Boonzaier, 2016; Wetherell & Edley, 1999). I aim to build on this existing scholarship to contextualise and historicise men’s lives, and particularly their ideas around shame as an emotion that has critical implications for men’s progression towards non-violent masculinities. As noted by Morrell (1998), critical studies on men and masculinities – and particularly issues around masculinity and vulnerability – should not be viewed as admonishing men of their gendered power and responsibility but rather as a “precondition for gender justice” (p. 11). The men in this study were participants in a domestic violence intervention programme designed to assist them in ending their violence against women. This intervention space is important for interrogating the shaming mechanisms employed to mobilise men towards non-violent, progressive, pro-feminist masculinities, and is thus engaged with in the next section.

The “pro-feminist” masculinity, racialised shame and respectability

Over the last few decades, there has been a global focus on transforming dominant masculinities and engaging boys and men in the movement towards gender equality and healthy pro-feminist masculinities through intervention and activist work. Although contemporary feminist scholarship on the politics of emotion has noted the political significance and progressive potential of shame in engaging men towards the development of pro-feminist, non-violent, egalitarian masculinities (e.g. Britt & Heise, 2000; Goldrick-Jones, 2002; White & Peretz, 2010), we have seen contrary outcomes for applying shame retributively in the specific context of domestic violence intervention programmes for men in Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States (see Corvo & Johnson, 2003; Gadd, 2004; Gottzén, 2016), and in the South African context. In South Africa, for example, intervention models for domestically violent men are largely adopted from North American models but hold limited applicability in this context (Boonzaier & Van Niekerk, 2018; McCloskey et al., 2016). These models draw on aspects of mainstream western feminist theories that tend to foreground a focus on gender only and men’s subjectivities as perpetrators (Boonzaier & Van Niekerk, 2018). In this regard, other aspects of their identities shaped by race, class, location and cultural traditions are ignored, as well as how these markers impact on men’s progression towards pro-feminist subjectivities (Ratele, 2015). In addition, black men participating in these intervention programmes in the South African context were found to experience them as shameful, further drawing attention to how shame used with retributive intentions might intersect with other experiences of marginalisation in their lives (Boonzaier & Van Niekerk, 2018).

Boonzaier and Van Niekerk (2018) argue that this reductionist approach to understanding men’s violence is reflected in Connell’s (2005) critique of “masculinity” and black feminists’ critiques of mainstream western feminisms. They suggest that such feminisms fail to consider the ways in which men who are marginalised at the intersection of their race and class find themselves in positions of simultaneous power and powerlessness, and how this may shape their transitions from violent to non-violent, pro-feminist forms of masculinity; a discursive positioning that has been argued to be more relevant for “men in the West” (Ratele, 2013b). In public and political South African discourses of pro-feminist and gender equal masculinities, Ratele (2013b) argues that these discourses may serve to isolate and “other” black masculinities through its positioning as, “anti-African, equating it with modernity, (white) middle-class aspirations, and widespread lack of (male) economic advancement” (p. 257). This disconnect with the meaning of pro-feminist masculinities amongst some black masculinities might be part of a bigger issue related to the colonialist, “‘white authority male voice’ from the rich West” that silence and “other” men who deviate from this norm (Ratele, 2013b, p. 262). I therefore ask the following questions: What options might this study’s sample of working-class “coloured” men have in terms of their development of a non-violent masculinity, especially given the disconnect black South African men experience in relation to the pro-feminist masculinity? How might discourses of shame be implicated in men’s imaginings of a “pro-feminist” masculinity?

In this paper, it is illustrated how meanings of the “progressive”, pro-feminist masculinity are deeply intertwined with the discourse of respectability. This discourse of respectability served to normalise subjects, silence discourses of “coloured” shame and position men in relation to westernised middle-class notions of the modern man, who Walker (2005) characterises as being in “control, respectable, rational, and responsible” (p. 233). I understand the men’s bodies as sites of shame and examine how they attempt to dissociate from the imprint of racial stereotypes that infantilise and position them as violent, dangerous, criminals, illegitimate and untrustworthy (see Erasmus, 2001; Haupt, 2012; Western, 1996) and the meaning this holds for the development of a non-violent masculinity.

This paper represents locally constructed knowledges and complexities around masculinities shaped by the socio-cultural, political and historical particularities of colouredness in this Cape Town community, but also through global discourses that shape localised relations of masculinities. These boundaries between local and global notions of masculinities are fluid, porous and continuously being adapted, internalised and resisted and should be read in this light.

While the current South African literature on emotion work serves as an important foundation for this paper’s investigations, I additionally acknowledge the importance of transnational dialogues (see Shefer, Hearn, & Ratele, 2015) and note that northern theorisations that assess the political progressive potential of shame amongst domestically violent men provide essential considerations for understanding the process of shaming. I conceptualise shame as an emotion that can be represented individually and collectively, as aligned with scholars such as Scheff (2000) and Gottzén (2016, 2017) who view shame relationally, and as an important part of identity construction.

Method

Research context

Ten individual in-depth face-to-face interviews were conducted with five men who had perpetrated violence against a woman partner(s). The men’s ages ranged from 47 to 57 years and all participants described themselves as “coloured”. Two participants were employed full-time, predominantly in unskilled or low-skilled employment, while the remainder were unemployed at the time of the interviews. The majority of the men reported being in long-term heterosexual marriages while one man reported being divorced.

The men were purposively sampled and recruited from a men’s programme at a community-based organisation, where the aim is to create a healthy cycle of individuals, families and communities. Men voluntarily attended the men’s programme to help end their violence against partners, which included intensive personal development and mentorship training modules towards the development of non-violent, pro-feminist masculinities. Participants were interviewed at the organisation they attended. The organisation is based in a community in the Cape Town metropole, which is predominantly Afrikaans-speaking and bears important similarities to Cape Flats communities. Geography played a central role in the construction of colouredness, especially given forced removals, and the Cape Flats is described by some as a central defining feature of working-class “coloured” identities (Salo, 2007). The Cape Flats is an area developed over the 1960s and 1970s in the name of the Group Areas Act of 1950, which acted as a “dumping ground” (Jensen, 1999, p. 76) predominantly for the group categorised as “coloured” South Africans. Although participants were not located at the Cape Flats, their community resembles a forced removal area due to rapid urbanisation, widespread poverty, high unemployment rates, and severe housing shortages, largely owing to the apartheid urbanisation policies.

The men participated in two interviews – each between 60 to 90 minutes long – to ensure depth and quality of the data collected, and for the interviewer to gain some rapport with the men. The two interviews did not vary in type; however, aspects that were not covered or that needed clarification in the first interview were addressed in the second interview. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and the men were asked to relay experiences about the following: their first experience with witnessing, experiencing or perpetrating violence against a woman and to provide a story of that incident; and subsequent incidents of violence against women (if any) throughout their lives. Men were also asked to talk about the way in which other individuals in their social groups (friends, family, neighbours, community members, bystanders, and so on) responded to their abuse against partner(s) and their engagement with the programme.

Data analysis and reflexive insights

I adopted Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) as a means to interpret the layered talk and silences around shame and the ways in which power, oppression, exclusion and inclusion worked in the construction of various subjectivities (Parker, 2005). In providing a historical analysis of how different forms of language may have shaped experiences of colouredness, I found this analysis approach useful in its capacity to unearth unarticulated experiences and meanings related to oppressions but also in regard to the insights it provides into the “rules, divisions and systems of a particular body of knowledge” (Arribas-Ayllon & Walkerdine, 2008, p. 99), allowing for the complexities of various forms of oppressive knowledge structures and their shaping of racialised discourses to emerge. The analysis was guided by Arribas-Ayllon and Walkerdine’s (2008) methodological principles for conducting FDA. This form of analysis enabled critical reflections in relation to 1) how the men positioned themselves as “subjects” in complex relations of power through various forms of language use, 2) how these subject positions allowed for contradictory experiences of colouredness, masculinities and shame, and 3) how in the process of negotiating subjectivity the men either reproduced, challenged or resisted available discourses of colouredness taken up to create distance from shamed subjectivities.

Wicomb (1998) illustrates how the denial of “coloured” shame is implicit in the very act of not naming and speaking of it, when she says “it is after all the very nature of shame to stifle its own discourse” (p. 92). In this regard, the data shows how the men did not break the silence of historical and racialised shame. I was thus particularly interested in the ideological function of discourse to understand who is included and excluded through certain kinds of talk and the forms of power that are silenced through these discourses (Parker, 2005). The men took up strategies to avoid naming shame, embarrassment or humiliation as a way of silencing their own racialised shame and to achieve positions of pride, respect and feelings of superiority relative to “other” coloured community members, which is unpacked further in the data.

In addition, I reflect on my identity as a young “coloured” woman researcher – represented against the backdrop of a privileged, predominantly white university – and the important implications this held for men’s representations of themselves in the context of the interview. Although I conducted this study with a community of “coloured” people with whom I shared a racial classification under the apartheid system, my difference was nonetheless marked. While most of the “coloured” population remained impoverished over multiple generations, I was embedded in the small middle-class. In contrast to my English-speaking, middle-class background, most of the participants noted Afrikaans as their preferred language and formed part of the working-class in Cape Town. The lives of the participants therefore represented both familiar and different experiences of colouredness to my own and emerged at points during the interviews, as noted in the analysis section. I acknowledge how my privileged position in relation to some of the interviewees limits my full comprehension of their experiences of marginalisation that continue to silence and exclude working-class “coloured” communities. In addition, my difference was further marked through my age and gender; some men (such as Lloyd) might have positioned me within a traditional feminine discourse as gentle and nurturing given the open, sensitive approach adopted in the interview. This may have cultivated a space for men to relay discourses of chivalry and respectability (see Boonzaier, 2014), which provides insight into men’s agendas in the interview context.

Ethical considerations

A number of ethical measures were implemented in this study to ensure participants’ rights were protected in terms of voluntary and informed consent, anonymity and non-maleficence. Informed consent was gathered from participants and they were well briefed about their rights to withdraw from the study at any time without any negative consequences. Participants were further informed that their willingness (or lack thereof) to participate in the study would not influence their participation in the programme being delivered by the organisation. The interviews were delivered in an ethical and sensitive manner and the men were informed about additional counselling sources at the organisation, in their community of residence and in the broader Cape Town area. Participants are identified through pseudonyms and, to further anonymise their identities, all personal identifiers were removed including the name of the community in which they reside and the community organisation.

“Stifling” shame: An analysis of “coloured” partner-violent men’s constructions of shame and respectability

The formation of “respectable masculinity”, for the men in this study, appeared to emerge from the need to silence discourses of “coloured” shame. The men in this study tended to re-inscribe the shame of working-class “coloured” communities in which they reside and the dominant discourses of violent masculinities reportedly being encouraged by community members. On the one hand, men positioned themselves as part of the in-group of the working-class “coloured” communities, indicating that they are entangled and implicated in ideas that shame the communities and groups of which they form part. On the other hand, the men at times dissociate from and “other” the group of working-class “coloured” men to construct themselves relative to a “respectable coloured” manhood. These contradictory subject positions represent an ongoing struggle and conflict between notions of masculinity that strive towards gaining status and reputation, and those characterised by being in control, respectable, rational, and responsible. This conflict between different expressions of masculinity was largely represented through men’s relationships with peers and other community members who are constructed as an audience that re-shames the men for attempting to embody and embrace a respectable masculinity. Furthermore, as the men were often found to resist dominant discourses of “coloured” men as thugs, gangsters and criminals, they referred not only to their perpetration of partner violence but also to forms of interpersonal violence that had been perpetrated between men. References to these varied forms of violence additionally speak to their community as a site for frequent encounters with violence and how forms of violence might be viewed on a continuum, with various forms of violence shaping their gendered-race-class selves.

Reproducing shameful discourses of the working-class “coloured” community

The men drew on discourses that re-inscribed the shame of working-class “coloured” communities in which they reside and the dominant representations of violent masculinity reportedly being encouraged by community members. For example, Lloyd states:

If you associate with our, with the coloured community, the way we were shown to be a man is totally, it’s totally wrong. In our community, if you’re not a violent person, people don’t respect you. (Interview 11)

In problematising the working-class “coloured” community for their part played in endorsing violent performances of masculinity – both relative to interpersonal violence between men and partner violence against women – Lloyd draws on dominant discourses that shame the community and the cultural norms that make violence possible. Later in our interview, Lloyd represents two forms of masculinity: the “gentleman”, who is not a respected masculinity amongst community members, and the violent “wolf”, a nickname Lloyd earned by becoming violent. According to Lloyd, the community members’ encouragement of the violent “wolf” masculinity signals a departure from respectability. Importantly, he deflects from directly shaming his own perpetration of partner violence against women partners and other men, to instead reproducing discourses that shame the broader socio-cultural and gendered context within which violence takes place.

The men in this study participated voluntarily in programmes designed to end their violence against partners, and to transition towards non-violent masculine subjectivities that position them as “good” rather than “bad” men. Although programmes designed to end men’s violence generally aim to foster the development of pro-feminist masculinities, the men in this sample may have reconstructed the notion of “good” masculinity to instead take on features of the “respectable man”. Although men’s alignment with respectable subjectivities may distance them from racialised and gendered discourses that position “coloured” masculinities as violent criminals, it may still grant men participation in the patriarchal gender order. In its alignment with subjectivities of the provider, and the modern and rational man (Walker, 2005), men’s progression towards western masculine ideals of respectability could be interpreted as a dissociation from the negative stereotypes associated with colouredness to attain the values of whiteness and middle-class respectability (see Adhikari, 2006). Bulhan (1985) describes these colonising moments as “cultural in-betweenity”, where dominated groups that find themselves torn between maintaining elements of indigenous cultural life for the sake of survival or advancing in the colonial context take on aspects of the dominant groups.

In the context of the programme, the “respectable gentleman” subjectivity appears to be carried with pride, whilst in the context of the community the very same subjectivity is shamed. Some of the men dealt with these battles for subjectivity through reproducing stigmatising representations of colouredness that shame and other “coloured” people as “uneducated” on issues around gender and marriage:

Donny: In our coloured communities, we are incorrectly educated about marriage. We are actually not educated about it […] “the man is the roof, I am the floor” – that term has grown in the community. The women and the men say it. There where the low-class coloured people are – they talk like that, in their communities you see. (Interview 15)

Donny blames working-class “coloured” communities for his problematic education around marriage. He notes that “low class coloured people” believe that men are superior to women (i.e. “the man is the roof, I am the floor”) and he attributes this belief to incorrect education on the issue. Lloyd further reinforces this negative discourse of uneducated working-class “coloured” people:

Lloyd: My people are very uneducated man, very uneducated. If you talk to people […] they will tell you, “The coloureds are (stupid)”. Really, they are. (Interview 13)

Both Lloyd and Donny do not explicitly name “shame” through their negative portrayals of “coloured” people, which indicates the extent to which discourses of racialised shame might be silenced and “stifled” amongst the men, and instead talked about the “othering” of coloured groups. The discourse of racial hierarchy that positions blackness as inferior is reproduced not only by “coloureds” against African groups but also against “other” coloureds (Erasmus, 2001; Wicomb, 1998). Erasmus (2001) provides an example where she draws on the idea of “dark skin and kinky hair” as the representations of those marked as “‘other coloured’, inferior or lower class” (p. 24).

Although Lloyd and Donny reproduce pathological constructions of working-class “coloured” people, they still employ language that signals their membership within the working-class “coloured” community (i.e. “Because my people are very uneducated” and “In our coloured communities, we are incorrectly educated about marriage”). They consider themselves part of the working-class “coloured” community, indicating that they are internalising the shame at the intersection of their race, class and gendered subjectivities. Gottzén (2016) stated that “displaying shame demonstrates a desire to belong” (p. 173) – although the men are not forthrightly displaying shame, drawing on discourses that shame themselves and their community might articulate a desire to reformulate their masculinities and to belong as “good” respectable men. Lloyd and Donny reproduce shaming discourses of the working-class “coloured” community from their position as in-group members; however, it may also be argued that they gain the authority to do this through their position as “enlightened”, respectable members of their men’s programme that makes them more knowledgeable in terms of what they may assume to be aligned with a pro-feminist politics.

Notably, Lloyd and Donny did not appear to display shame in the interview context in response to these pathologising statements about “coloured” groups, especially given that I am a “coloured” woman. They assumed I would consent to their negative portrayals of working-class “coloured” people, possibly given my assumed middle-class positioning and privileged affiliations with the university. It could be considered that the men positioned me not only as a pro-feminist audience, given my investments in feminist partner-violence research, but also as an “audience” predominantly concerned with the attainment of respectability given my assumed middle-class “coloured” positioning. The ways in which men might have positioned me offers some insight into how constructions of shame were utilised by men in the interview space. By expressing shame, Gottzén (2016) suggests, men are able to simultaneously denounce their perpetration of violence while retaining their “normality” through explaining their violence as the consequence of “difficult circumstances” (p. 173). In the case of this study, through reinforcing representations that shame social and cultural community norms, the men position themselves as passive objects in complying with these norms that encourage men’s violence and as the dominant form of masculinity men were exposed to while growing up in their community. It could be argued that the outcome of reproducing shame in this way is that the men are positioned as “victims” of their miseducation about manhood; however, the re-education offered through their men’s programme might be a way in which to normalise their gender-race-class selves. Men’s dissociation from the working-class “coloured” community represents a different shaming mechanism and assists them in advancing towards their non-violent respectable subjectivities, which is explored further in the next theme.

Dissociating from the shameful subject

Given the dominant representations of violent masculinities in the community, the men tended to speak from an “outsider” position to dissociate from the community. The previous constructions of shame involved the pathologisation of men’s gender, race and class identities; however, this discourse shows how some men chose to silence the shamed aspects of their identities as working-class “coloured” men by distancing themselves from the disreputable younger “others” to achieve positions of pride, respect and “maturity”:

Robert: All the guys running around with guns and hitting the girls now think they are men. I also use to think I’m a man that time, but now that I’m out of my situation, and I’m standing on the other side and I can see the destruction I did cause man, that time. I don’t see actually that you are men that time, actually then you’re more like a girl. (Interview 16)

This “before and after” structure, as in Robert’s illustration above, was a common feature in men’s interviews overall. Robert speaks about his past self when he says, “I also used to think I’m a man that time”, and transitions towards his current self: “Now that I’m out of my situation […] I don’t see actually that you are men that time”. As men’s talk in their interviews were largely retrospective and focused on their past violent selves, it allowed them to distance themselves from, and even silence, their shamed subjectivities as “coloured” partner-violent men. In addition, men’s centring of their ages and processes of maturation further speaks to their transition from youthful subjectivities concerned with building a reputation by being drinkers, fighters and rebellious (McDowell, 2002) to respectable manhoods that grant them positions of wisdom and “life experience”, contributing towards their formation of a “new” masculinity encompassed by pride and “respect”. Furthermore, Lloyd draws on negative stereotypes to dissociate from the spoiled collective identity of “coloured” masculinities:

Lloyd: It’s not like I want to be disrespectful to the coloured men, but they are cowards, man. They are walking around with knives and think they are men and every situation that they are confronted with they want to pull a knife. That’s what’s happening in our community. (Interview 11)

In contrast to the extracts in the previous theme, Lloyd now uses language such as “they” to illustrate his position as an outsider to the in-group of “cowardly” coloured men. He appears to talk through a contradictory sense of self where the process of dissociating from racial and gendered shame is non-linear and paradoxical, and the tensions involved in securing a “respectable” masculinity are foreground. Skeggs (1997) and other scholars note that the working-class strive towards respectability and thus a positive identity by emphasising class differences between themselves and other working-class individuals, regarded as rough and unskilled. When imagined through the lens of respectability, Lloyd and Robert may be reproducing these negative stereotypes of “coloured” people in order to not only sever their affiliations with the “coloured” community but also to dissociate from dominant representations of a stigmatising, shamed collective identity of “dangerous” working-class “coloured” men. The men’s attempts, however, to dissociate from community beliefs and other violent men should also be read as powerful acts of agency within the context of social and material conditions that may confine their racialised, classed and masculine identities.

This study’s findings illustrate the deeply entrenched and powerful binarism of black masculinities that either demonise black “street” masculinities or reinforce middle-class representations of respectable, gentlemanly manhood. The men in this study appear to fluctuate between these dominant representations of black masculinities, rather than reformulating new, hybrid or pro-feminist masculinities, which contrasts with the findings that emerged from White and Peretz’s (2010) study. The African American men in their study were able to deconstruct stereotypical, demonising notions of black masculinities and move beyond shamed subjectivities to ones that incorporate pride through taking up progressive, pro-feminist masculinities (White & Peretz, 2010). In the current study, the men do not reframe their masculine subjectivities outside the dominant binaries of thug vs. respectable. However, they do talk about the complexities of negotiating between these subjectivities and the obstacles they encounter in dissociating from and silencing their shamed identities by taking up the “respectable” subject position, which is further noted in the next theme.

Silencing shame and the obstacles to attaining respectability

Men who aligned themselves with a respectable, non-violent masculinity positioned themselves as outcasts and “othered” by community members who viewed their non-violence as shameful:

Lloyd: When I decided to change my life, people, they didn’t want me to change […] there were big changes that were going to take place in my life man, and it was almost like a threat to them […] they are negative they don’t want to move to positive and anyone that moves to positive is a threat to them. (Interview 13)

In departing from pathological constructions of the “coloured”, working-class masculinity and taking up a non-violent, respectable masculinity, Lloyd talks about the risk of being socially excluded by the audience of community members. In theorising about individuals’ experiences of shame in relation to their settings, Ahmed (2014) notes the entanglement of emotions and cultural norms and the way in which these cultural investments serve to regulate the experience of emotions. In falling short of conforming to these cultural norms, individuals might risk ostracisation, and may consequently experience shame (Gottzén, 2016). Keith – one of the men in the programme who had served time in prison for attempted murder – similarly constructs this shame as arising from social ostracisation. He represents community members as the main obstacle to achieving a positive transition to a respectable manhood:

Keith: I mean there was one guy in [prison with me], he was there for multiple rapes and he said to me one day, “Keith, you know when you leave prison, you’re going to come back again man, because you’re gebrandmerk [translation: branded or labelled]. Nobody’s going to believe and trust you”. And it took me, although this is a violent community, it took me a long time, still people are waiting for me to, to abuse a woman or to maybe sexually molest a young girl, because there’s a lot of young girls […] and the young, the young guys who are gangsters would taunt me because they know I don’t belong to a gang here. (Interview 4)

Lloyd and Keith represent the working-class “coloured” community as suspicious and untrustworthy of men journeying towards non-violence and respectability, as their shamed status as perpetrators is considered to be permanent. In spite of Keith’s desire to distance himself from his spoiled identity as a prisoner and a woman-batterer, he reports that community members continued to shame and “mark” him as deviant. In addition, Keith’s inclination towards female friendships reportedly made community members suspicious of his intentions. Ball (1970) has explained that if an individual is dubbed as one having a lack of respectability, then this label is most likely “irreversible” (p. 345). Ball (1970) used the example of men who, having returned from prison, are still perceived as ex-convicts, “with the taint of prior lacks lingering on to structure presents and futures for those so labelled” (p. 345). Similarly, Keith notes that he was gebrandmerk as a prisoner, constructing his pathologised identity as a prisoner and “non-respectable” violent man as permanent in the eyes of other community members. The notion of the “permanency” of the perpetrator identity is further articulated through Ahmed’s (2014) statement: “Some identities become stigmatised or shaming within the social order, so that the subject in assuming such identities becomes committed to a life that is read by others as shameful […] The difficulty of moving beyond shame is a sign of the power of the normative” (p. 107). The dominant discourse of black working-class masculinities as criminals and gangsters appears to represent a normalised, accepted form of masculinity that is carried with pride and that generates respect from some community members and therefore illustrates the challenges men experience in countering the binarism of black masculinities.

It could be considered that the men show signs of having gone through the disintegrative shaming process, as described by Braithwaite (1989), who views shame as an emotion imposed on the perpetrator by the family or community to achieve the cessation of offending; in the case of this study’s men, it appears to be carried out through disintegrative shaming. This process of shaming has the outcome of labelling the offender as deviant and socially excluding the individual, leaving little to no possibility of reintegration in the community. It could be argued that the audience of community members are ultimately the ones with the power to grant men reintegration and respectable identities; thus, in men taking back their power to be active agents in their change, this involved dissociating from the “coloured” community. The men in this study appear to be in a battle for subjectivity in that, on the one hand, reproducing shameful discourses of working-class “coloured” masculinities and the broader community for an audience thought to endorse respectability, allows them integration into the category of “normal”, respectable men, while, on the other hand, the men are re-shamed for departing from masculinity norms that endorse violence in the eyes of the community. The concluding section presents further reflections on the findings and the meanings they hold for this study’s sample of men.

Concluding remarks

This paper explores how working-class “coloured” partner-violent men discursively represent shame relative to their gendered, raced and classed selves. In focusing on the nuances of shame, it centres the silences in men’s talk and the obstacles they encounter in attempting to escape their shamed identities. Additionally, the paper interrogates the contradictory positions held by participants illustrated through the ways in which they shift between the shame of a subjugated raced identity in the South African context, the shame of failing to perform ideals of masculinity that gain them reputation and status in local contexts, and the shame of failing to align themselves with the middle-class pro-feminist masculinity ideals that are central to the interventions they form part of. Scheff (2000) and Van der Westhuizen (2016) would argue that the men are in a struggle to break free from “unacknowledged” shame, characterised by the destructive cyclical process of anger that re-triggers shame and that has implications for their fulfilment of positive identity transformations and reified social bonds.

While acknowledging the importance of understanding how global relations shape local masculinities, I have argued that partner-violent men’s shame can only be fully grasped in its local and historical context. This paper builds on the work of Boonzaier and Van Niekerk (2018) to illustrate the limitations of northern models for theorising domestically-violent men in the Global South, and suggests that in order to understand constructions of shame of gendered violence, the interplay of historicised racialised shame that lives into the present for descendants of colonialism and apartheid requires serious attention. This article should not be read as reductionist and deterministic in its positioning of “coloured” men as shamed individuals and as people who can only experience pride through respectability but should encourage further engagements with oppressed communities to make meaning of their “silences” and experiences of subjugation (see Bell, 2016).

This paper adds to growing scholarship in thinking through how to work with boys and men located in the Global South and strategies around working through forms of resistance toward the development of pro-feminist masculinities. Although acknowledging the importance of western conceptualisations of the pro-feminist, progressive masculinity, I consider how this form of masculinity might be re-conceptualised in this sample of men to consider the geopolitics of “coloured” masculinities and how a “new” masculinity might liberate them from oppressive, racist, patriarchal, homophobic and capitalist pasts (Ratele, 2013b). The idea of a progressive, “new” masculinity manifested differently for these men, as they may not have been able to imagine it outside the limited dominant pathologising discourses of black masculinities available to them. Ratele (2013b) suggests that in engaging black masculinities in the project towards progressive masculinities, attention needs to be paid to how such masculinities can be more relevantly viewed by black men and seen as “pro-African”. As such, I argue that the “respectable” masculinity be viewed in its capacity to free the men from discourses that shame and pathologise their race-gender-class identities but also as a stepping-stone towards the development of a more egalitarian masculinity if engaged with more critically in the intervention programme space. This argument clearly requires further research and engagement.

I have illustrated here the importance of understanding shame in relation to multiple intersectional identities and importantly through historical traumas, to refrain from bolstering individualising discourses that make the performance of gender and race a problem of the individual. It is certainly the case that understanding the entanglement of violence within its socio-cultural context, and alongside its emotional investments, is required in contexts regarded as “post”-colonial – such as South Africa – where the cultural and collective aspects of shame ought to be prioritised.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to the men who shared their stories so willingly. My warm appreciation also goes to the organisation I worked with and their staff for their support and assistance for this research.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work is based on research supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the authors and are not necessarily to be attributed to the NRF.

Notes

Author Biography

Taryn van Niekerk is a Scarce Skills Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cape Town. Her primary research and teaching areas include feminist poststructuralist theories of gender, critical psychological and post-colonial theories of identity and subjectivity, and intersectional insights into men, masculinities and intimate partner violence against women studies in the South African context. She has published in these related areas, including her forthcoming co-edited volume, Decolonial Feminist Community Psychology (Springer, 2019).

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