Browsing by Author "Nqadala, Sisipho"

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    Black women in the city: bodies, spaces and subversion in Cape Town
    (University of the Western Cape, 2024) Nqadala, Sisipho; Forte, Jung Ran Annachiara
    This thesis explores the experiences of three Black women living in Cape Town, examining how they negotiate, contest, and subvert the city’s racialised and gendered spatial dynamics. By adopting a critical feminist lens, this study underscores the intersection of body politics and spatial resistance by illustrating how Black women shape and reshape everyday neoliberal politics in the urban space in post-apartheid Cape Town. This thesis seeks to contribute to the growing scholarship of Black radical feminism, urban justice and decolonial thought by untangling the nuances of identity and spatial politics. In what ways have Black women living in Cape Town enacted forms of survival, solidarity and defiance? How do they challenge, reconfigure and subvert the city’s socio-political landscape? And how does this inform and shape our understanding of how race, sexuality, gender and class intertwine and unfold in Cape Town? This research highlights women's unwavering commitments to inclusion and equity in the urban space, by making their lived experiences and narratives salient for reimagining urban futures. I contend that these narratives unflinchingly expose the potentialities and possibilities of Black life, intimacy, and body and spatial politics, while reasserting the ongoing systemic legacies of apartheid. Following Saidiya Hartman, my work acknowledges that subjects’ “freedom” and autonomy, always precarious and fragmented, the forms of subjection they beget, and the immense responsibility they require, are an illusion. Therefore, the individual experiences in this thesis do not negate systemic issues, but rather are situated within them. These are not feel-good stories, but narratives that articulate how Black life reiterates itself in post-apartheid Cape Town.