F-Words Explored in Inaugural Lecture

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Negotiating the “F-words” in Academia: “Faith” and “Feminism” within Contexts of Gender-Based Violence, was the title of the Inaugural Lecture of Professor Sarojini Nadar of UKZN’s Gender and Religion Studies. 

Delivering the Lecture to a packed hall on the Howard College campus, Nadar proposed that the persistence of gender-based violence was the result of an over-reliance on legislation to promote gender equity, without recognising that beliefs about gender were more likely to be deeply rooted within cultural and religious world views than the Constitution.  

She thus identified the essential need for critical research and teaching in this area.  

Nadar’s Lecture traced her decade-long journey researching and teaching within gender and religion; on feminism and faith and the intersections between them in a post-apartheid public higher education context.

The Lecture opened with a discussion about challenges facing this fundamentally inter-disciplinary field within South African academia and society.  A critical review of Nadar’s publications, pedagogy, and praxis followed in order to identify the challenges and opportunities for future research and teaching in this area.

In the light of Women’s Month activities, Nadar said the feminist roots of the commemoration were lost in what she called “pink goodie bag” occasions.  

‘Pink goodie occasions happen throughout the month of August. My biggest concern about these occasions is that big corporates open the doors to a few hours of facial pampering sessions for women in this month, while for the rest of the year they slam the boardroom doors of decision making in the faces of those very same women,’ said Nadar.  

Referring to an opinion piece in the Mail and Guardian in 2008, she asked the question about how we got from ‘Wathint’ Abafazi! Wathint’ Imbokodo’ to pink goodie bags as the hallmark of what essentially should be a month for feminist reflection and action. 

Nadar also proclaimed that she was an angry feminist. ‘I am angry about gender inequity and patriarchy in general but more specifically I am angry about how this gender inequity and patriarchy in popular discourse is not recognised as the root cause of the scourge of gender-based violence, particularly sexual violence.’  

She went on to cite various cases such as the rape and beating of women at taxi-ranks for wearing mini-skirts, the killing of lesbians as part of a measure called “corrective rape” to “teach” them how to love men and even the abduction of 200 Nigerian girls by Boko Haram.  

Nadar said had spent the last decade talking and writing about the anger created by gender-based violence as well as teaching about it and engaging communities on it. 

‘People who study faith and religion such as feminist scholars are treated like a strange lunatic fringe. This of course is rather peculiar given that theology was the founding discipline of the modern university as we know it, and the pomp and ceremony you are witnessing here today is largely modelled on the church rituals,’ she said.  

She also explored epistemic violence in relation to feminism and academia describing it as that ‘which occurs when scholarly discussions are silenced on the basis of a perceived lack of scientific rigour, or by denying access to certain groups of scholars through policing the intellectual borders of knowledge production. It is when a peer reviewer sends your article back with a comment: “This is not scholarly it is feminist”,’ said Nadar.  

She went on to discuss her journey of negotiating faith and feminism in the academic world, including research studies with various other academics which added to the volume of work in such areas of research.

Her closing lecture remarks borrowed in part from Martin Luther King Junior.  She said: ‘I have a dream that I will not have to negotiate the “F” words in academia anymore. That the “F” words will be mainstreamed and embraced as important for academic reflection as well as communal praxis; I have a dream that we will recognise the discursive significance of these words for political, academic and social freedoms.’ 

‘I have a dream that we will align these words with another “F” word – freedom.  Just like the world shifted their understanding from Nelson Mandela the terrorist to Nelson Mandela the freedom fighter, I too long for the day when we will see how important fanatic feminism is for freedom fighting.’ 

Melissa Mungroo