The Powers of Discourse: the identity of subaltern women under colonial law in Nervous Conditions and Daughters of the Twilight

Abstract

Subaltern women, their identities constructed within the margins of imperialist history, are subject to the privileged discourses of institutionalised medicine, education and the law. This essay focuses on how the laws of Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa, as well as customary law, circumscribe the corporeality of these women, and reads two narratives, NeNous Conditions by Tsitsi _Dangarembga and Daughters of the Twilight by Farida Karodia, in which female right is absent in the face of male law. The paper critiques relevant statutes, acts and court cases, and draws on Kristevan theory of the abject to discuss the representation of the black woman as pollutive and defiling in the apartheid cultural formation.

Opsommlng
Ondergeskikte vroue wie se identiteit gestalte gekry het binne die grense van imperia· listiese geskiedenis, is onderworpe aan bevooregte diskoers van geTnstitusionaliseerde medisyne, opvoeding en die reg. Hierdie essay fokus op die wyse waarop die wette van Rhodesia en apartheid Suid-Afrika asook gewoontereg, die liggaamlikheid van hierdie vroue omskryf, en interpreteer twee verhale, NeNous Conditions deur Tsitsi Dangarembga en Daughters of the Twilight deur Farida Karodia, waarin vroueregte ontbreek teenoor relevante statute, wette en hofsake, en maak gebruik van Kristeva se teorie van die "Abject" (veragtelike) om die voorstelling van die swart vrou as verontreinigend en besoedelend in die kulturele opbou van apartheid te bespreek.