“As part of a larger book project on inhospitability in relation to race, class and gender in South African spaces, this seminar considers how languages of whiteness — white-speak in context — work to define and police space,” said Nadia Sanger of the Department of English at Stellenbosch University. “The aim is not to historicise race in South Africa but to, through an auto-ethnographic approach, pay attention to the ways in which white people are struggling to imagine a different situatedness in South African society.”
Sanger’s work will result in a collection of essays – “I have changed the title and may again, but it will definitely look at inhospitability as a way of being. I’m visiting hospitable and inhospitable places to observe and learn”.
She explained that the work crosses disciplines and uses feminist auto-ethnography as the methodological tool. “This methodology attempts to theorise what one sees and feels, presenting oppositional knowledge that ties the individual to histories of struggle and liberation. I look at language, what words mean, in particular moments.”
“These moments reveal how everyday encounters between bodies and minds reflect struggle, specifically a white anxiety that works to move black presence out of spaces considered not theirs,” she continued. “These engagements within space reflect a society at work; a society labouring with deep inequalities and damage. While these moments reveal how white bodies may act as unnominated hosts of all Others in space, this control is also resisted by Others. Threatening the host’s space through resistance, however, might lead to extreme efforts to silence and remove, to move out.”
“I’m trying to understand my relation to self and others in relation to violence,” she added. “Asking what needs to change before another engagement is possible. The larger project is about interruptions. It’s not about the good or the bad guys but rather how bodies and minds rub up against each other in a divided space.”
“In South Africa the persistence of inequality remains. I’m bearing witness by telling the smaller to larger stories and asking you to bear witness with me” she said.
“If whiteness, as British feminist scholar Sara Ahmed writes, is ‘an ongoing and un-finished history, which orientates bodies in specific directions, affecting how they ‘take up’ space’, my work attempts to show how this orientation manoeuvres people of colour into particular affective spaces.”
She noted that Ahmed’s questioning of what it means to notice whiteness has shaped her as a South African. “White-created the rules and system – it was not always seen and felt but omnipresent. It was discussed and resisted in my family home. As Black South Africans we no longer need passes, we have relative freedom, but it’s not unlimited or without surveillance.”
For her seminar Sanger presented personal experiences of the use of language to exclude in exchanges on school and neighbourhood whatsapp groups.
“As part of critical feminist practice that links the individual to the social, the scholarly work I am doing here makes me vulnerable at multiple levels, and I am aware that this unguardedness rubs up against more traditional forms of knowledge in the academy that hold power,” she said.
You don’t belong here – not the right fit
By analysing a trail of messages, she showed that while such exchanges purport to be neutral and open, they are underlined by unspoken rules about what may or may not be discussed and, if you are seen to be breaking those rules, it’s suggested that you might be more comfortable in another group. She also pointed out that asking for information is seen as a problem especially asking for information which might be seen as political and that there is a lack of awareness that the personal reflects the systemic or structural issues.
“There’s a rhetoric about breaking these invisible rules. Such rule breaking may result in anger and aggression, and the suggestion that if you break the rules you should leave the group to protect the others. It’s underlined by the social and political meanings of white ownership of space and the shutting down of other voices – in this case, voices of colour.”
“It’s about what language means in a specific context. It maintains powerlessness despite pretending to be open to change,” she continued. “‘You are not the right fit’, ‘You should move elsewhere’ or ‘This is not the right place for this conversation’ are popular phrases. It’s about exclusion and marginalisation.”
“The use of apartheid rhetoric suggests there is a right fit. And, if you are willing to accept and not question the way things are done, there might be a place for you.”
“We were punished because we were not silent. It didn’t matter that we were scholars, we were seen first as people of colour. We were not welcome because we couldn’t assimilate, not because we couldn’t afford to be there.”
“The language used is ‘you must be confused’. It’s the politics of neutrality. Shutting down of political conversations. Being accused of having an agenda. While no agenda is seen as neutral, objective, seeing the whole picture. Not dealing in equality because it is not to be found. It enables humans to exist outside of South African realities inside South Africa,” she said.
“Politeness is used as a shutting-down strategy. It’s incontrovertible – everyone else is wrong. It’s an us and them rhetoric.”
In discussion, Sanger addressed the differences between online and in-person spaces, the impact of gender socialisation, the urgent need for such conversations to happen in South Africa, her methodology, and the use of terminology like inhospitability.
“This is not hard science but it’s also not soft science – it’s pretty hard,” she said. “There are ethics involved in what I include. I didn’t choose based on my own arguments, the conversation produced the argument. But I’m also not claiming my argument is absolutely correct – I’m saying this is the way I’m reading the data, others may read it differently. No particular truth is claimed. It doesn’t mean it’s not true but it’s located in my framing. My framing is a truth which rubs up against other truths and people from different disciplines may find elements of truth in different parts of the argument.”
“The use of inhospitability versus terms like intolerance is precisely what I’m thinking through,” she explained. “How does one host the otherness of the other? I haven’t found the language yet. I have no absolutely clear theoretical plan but I’m thinking and engaging.”
In response to a question about what white people need to do to change this, she stated that the conversations must happen. It’s important to reveal the damage that continues to be inflicted,” she said.
“South Africa is struggling to move faster in terms of transformation – the space is still controlled by 10% of the population. Such interactions heighten the differences between people.”
Michelle Galloway: Part-time media officer at STIAS
Photograph: SCPS Photography