Witnessing Marikana’s women: notes on implication and belonging

Abstract

by Nadzeya Husakouskaya
This essay can be read in many different ways. One of the possible
readings suggests that the essay reflects on the regimes of
inequality in contemporary South Africa as witnessed and perceived
by a white queer female scholar from Belarus.   Another
mode of reading invites the reader to explore the (im)possibility
of translation of and connection to ostensibly similar experiences
of oppression in different localities.  At the core of the essay
is Nadya’s photographic art project, which was developed three
years after she witnessed Women’s March in Marikana in September
2012.  The themes of alienation and familiarity, inequality
and solidarity, individuality and collectivity, oppression and resistance, and race, class and gender intersectionality are explored in
the text through the juxtaposition of the field notes, personal diary
entries, researcher’s reflections, photographs, and Facebook posts.
The essay represents an alternative academic writing, disrupting
classical academic requirements for references and predefined
text structure, which is yet another way of interpreting the incentive
behind the essay.