She’s Not a Bad Girl, Brenda Fassie: Past, Present and Future, A Canon for the Construction of Post Colonial Feminist Consciousness
Date
2023-07
Authors
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Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Abstract
In this research report, I examine the ways that icon Brenda Fassie operates as an important archive for the articulation of quotidian feminist consciousness. In paying close attention to the present re-emergence of Fassie in South African intimate publics that include idioms, modes, praxes, aesthetics, and consumptive forms that she currently figuratively circulates. I approach the question of an archive from two central sensibilities: first, with regards to authoritative narrative accounts related to her memorialization; and second, in the ways that her figure (re)appears in these intimate publics to reconfigure the meanings we attach to African femme/womanhood and sexualities. Looking to multiple archives is a methodological gesture at assembling a range of cultural objects that include her body of work, including the aural, visual, and aesthetic performance of her work; along with the archive of work produced with or about her that often situates itself around accounts of her biography. With this understanding of her archive, the approach is to see how Fassie figuratively operates, presenting contesting identities through which she can move in and out of multiple temporalities that are often contradictory. Fassie’s ability to transgress while equally forming a part of national historic discourse allows us to inquire into the ways that she complicates notions of gender and sexuality – and how these continue to shape current articulations of feminism in post-apartheid South Africa.
Description
A research report submitted in fulfilment of the partial requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in African Literature, Faculty of Humanities, School of Literature, Language and Media, at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023.
Keywords
Nation, Erotic, Intimate public, Post feminism, Womanhood, Memory, Time, UCTD
Citation
Qwesha, Qhama. (2023). She’s Not a Bad Girl, Brenda Fassie: Past, Present and Future, A Canon for the Construction of Post Colonial Feminist Consciousness. [Master's dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg]. WIReDSpace. https://hdl.handle.net/10539/40145