Intersectional Writing in Times of Protest
WiSER, in collaboration with Media Studies at Wits, warmly invites you to its opening event for 2016:
The #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall protests that have shaken South African campuses since early last year have invigorated various modes of politics. One of these is a powerful strain of what some refer to intersectionality, involving black feminist and queer politics that are seldom explicitly stated in South African political discourse. Many of the debates around these issues have taken place online, either in digital publications or on social media.
This panel discusses issues of writing and intersectionality within the protests and the movements surrounding them. The four speakers are young black South African women and former or current Wits students, who were working at the time as student journalists. They will consider the consequences and problematics of explicitly framing oneself as feminist or rejecting that label entirely; of trying to write, or not write, about #FeesMustFall from within and outside of Wits structures; of public writing as an act undertaken by the journalist-activist; of the tensions between being both a journalist and an activist; of engaging with power structures from a student position; and of operating within physical and online spaces that can be hostile to diverse voices.