Nqambaza, Palesa Rose2024-08-022024-08-022023-03Nqambaza, Palesa Rose. (2023). Rethinking the Logics of the Sex/Gender Anatomical Schema. [PhD thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg]. WIReDSpace. https://hdl.handle.net/10539/39941https://hdl.handle.net/10539/39941A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, to the Faculty of Humanities, at the School of Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, , in 2023.This dissertation is an appraisal of the dominant gender discourse(s) in selected South African anthropological, gender and feminist texts. It challenges the uncritical adoption of colonial sex/gender frameworks when making sense of indigenous ways and modes of being and proposes an Afrocentric alternative that goes beyond bio-logical frameworks. This study is two pronged. Firstly, it problematises the uncritical application of Western feminist theories that have tended to impose European realities on the African context. Secondly, it mines the indigenous archive for Afrocentric ideas that contribute to creating a uniquely African theory of subject formation that considers aspects important to the African world-sense such as seniority, kinship status and ancestral links. I make use of critical discourse analysis to analyse the dominant discourse(s) and knowledge on sex and gender within the context of what is today known as South Africa. I do this employing the Azanian philosophical tradition as the theoretical framework that informs the perspective from which I read and make sense of these discourses, using a mixture of textual analysis, linguistics, archival work, and historical method. Based on my reading of dominant gender discourses against textual, linguistic and historical evidence, I make the following arguments. Firstly, I problematise the blanket usage of the conceptual category of ‘woman’ to refer to colonised subjectivities. I demonstrate that Black womxn have been discursively constructed as existing outside the bounds of the conceptual category ‘woman’ who is the key subject of feminist theorising. Secondly, I demonstrate that the logics of the sex/gender anatomical schema, that organises men and women in a hierarchy, cannot account for indigenous modes of social organising. I maintain that African subjectivities are fluid, complex and contingent, depending on aspects such as one’s seniority, kinship status and ancestral links. Likewise, I invoke the institution of ubungoma as an additional site to demonstrate the inadequacy of the sex/gender anatomical framework in making sense of sangoma subjectivities. I also problematise the tendency to use LGBTQ languaging as an alternative in making sense of the institution of ubungoma. I maintain that while noble, this alternative framing is also implicated in underscoring the existence of a coherent sex/gender regime within which the institution of ubungoma is then assumed to be ‘queer’. I maintain that there is a pressing need to mine indigenous linguistic archives for alternative ways of wording indigenous subjectivities in ways that are not distortive, nor mimic Eurocentric versions.en©2023 University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.Indigenous sex/gender systemsKinshiparchyAfrican kinship systemsOyěwùmíAmadiumeGender fluidityRaceGenderUCTDSDG-5: Gender equalityThesisUniversity of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg