Browsing by Author "Kippie, Charndre Emma"

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    The effects of social media on the revitalisation of feminism and coloured women's identity politics
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2019-04) Kippie, Charndre Emma; Viljoen, Stella; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Visual Arts.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Despite the movement towards cultivating a democracy since 1994, South Africa is a country which still faces many challenges as a result of political and racial remnants of the Apartheid regime. With Apartheid’s segregating classification system etched in the minds of South Africans, a sense of hierarchal and binary thinking is still present. Today, Coloured women remain a marginalised demographic, due to longstanding racial and cultural stereotypes, deprecating visual representations, and media’s capacity to perpetuate and normalises these limiting typecasts. This marginalised demographic has recently begun to re-negotiate female Coloured identity norms across contemporary visual platforms of representation, specifically within the social media space. The purpose of this study is to investigate the postfeminist digital manifestation and reproduction of cultural, racial, sexual, gendered and religious identities within the social media domain, with specific reference to three Coloured South African women, namely Patty Monroe, Aisha Baker and Kim Windvogel. This study is approached from a mixed-methods perspective, employing an interpretive process of gathering and analysing data. This process involved a voluntary electronic survey which circulated online via snowball sampling methods, visual content analyses of social media posts, and structured interviews with case study individuals. The investigation highlighted themes regarding self-representation and self-presentation, submission and subversion, and agency, sexual responsibility and gender. This exploration of online visual depictions of Coloured South African women is an attempt to ascertain the existence of a postfeminist rhetoric that is a revitalisation (rather than a rejection) of the traditional feminist ethos. Issues surrounding private and public, exposure and concealment, and sexuality and modesty also emerged during the data analysis process. My findings include that a postfeminist rhetoric, which is an acknowledgement of and expansion upon classic feminist ideals, does exist. Imagery that employs this rhetoric provides a new means of representivity and an affirmative narrative for Coloured South African women; a contemporary way of seeing beyond longstanding, limiting racial and cultural representations. This rhetoric is arguably progressing towards a more intersectional approach to Coloured womanhood. It is further suggested that that an intersectional feminism, which adopts a sense of interdisciplinarity, be the next wave of enquiry when researching the Coloured demographic.