sempozyum_bildiri_kitabi

Conclusion
Stories challenge the language of oral and written experience, so often told from the hegemonic
perspectives. History changes from ‘his‐story’, to a broader narrative of experience more true to
reality. In this, I have sought to shed light on the importance of autobiographies that promote diverse
understandings of norms linked to the cultural, mainly those around gender and sexuality in
particular, and explore issues of the production of localized knowledge about social, personal, and
intimate relationships in an incredibly complex postcolonial world. Nkunzi Nkabinde’s Black Bull,
Ancestors and Me: My Life as a Lesbian Sangoma is an incredibly important example. The book raises
crucial questions about spirituality, sexuality, knowledge, and knowing, while demonstrating that
autobiography is a powerful tool to deconstruct these concepts.
Notes
1
Nkunzi Zandile Nkabinde, Black Bull, Ancestors and Me: My Life as a Lesbian Sangoma (Auckland Park: Fanele,
2008), 17.
2
Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993), 56.
3
see Gayatri Spivak, “Can the subaltern speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture edited by Cary
Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271‐313.
4
Maurice Wade, “From Eighteenth to Nineteenth Century Racial Science: Continuity and Change.” in Race and
Racism in Theory and Practice edited by Berel Lang (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 28.
5
Graciela Moreira‐Slepoy, “The Essentialist Representation of the Colonial Subject in Colonial Discourse,” Post‐
Scriptum 1.4 (2002): 2.
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
9
see Homi Bhabha, “Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority under a Tree outside
Delhi, May 1817,” in The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 102‐22.
10
Nanjala Nyabola, “This Thing Tolerance,” Pambazuka News, 7 July 2011,
http://www.pambazuka.net/en/category/panafrican/74708.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
13
Donald Polkinghorne, “Narrative Configuration in Qualitative Analysis” in Life History and Narrative edited by
J. Amos. Hatch and Richard Wisniewski (London: Falmer, 1995), 5.
14
see James Clifford and George E. Marcus, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley:
University of California, 1986).
15
Nkunzi Zandile Nkabinde, Black Bull, Ancestors and Me: My Life as a Lesbian Sangoma (Auckland Park: Fanele,
2008), 17.
16
Ibid.
17
Nkunzi Zandile Nkabinde, op. cit., 35.
18
Nkunzi Zandile Nkabinde, op. cit., 36.
19
Nkunzi Zandile Nkabinde, op. cit., 36‐37.
20
Nkunzi Zandile Nkabinde, op. cit., 38.
21
Nkunzi Zandile Nkabinde, op. cit., 68‐69.
22
Nkunzi Zandile Nkabinde, op. cit., 73.
23
Nkunzi Zandile Nkabinde, op. cit., 145.
24
Saskia Wiering, “Women Marriages and Other Same‐sex Practices: Historical Reflections on African Women’s
Same‐sex Relations” in Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men and Ancestral Wives: Female Same‐sex Practices in Africa
edited by Ruth Zilla Morgan and Saskia Wieringa (Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2005), 286.
25
Nkunzi Zandile Nkabinde, op. cit., 153.