Muholi,Z. 2004, ‘Aftermath’. (Appendix 1) |
The following article is a guest
post by Fadi Baghdadi (contactable: here) , a PhD candidate at The University of Sydney’s Department
of Sociology and Social Policy. Baghdadi’s
honours thesis explored the meanings Muslims women attribute to Islamic dress
and Islamic gender relations in an Australian context. His current research is
concerned with exploring how Lebanese Migrants have been effected by and negotiate space-time in regional Australia. The article bellow is an analysis of the social imaginaries that collide in the practice of 'corrective' rape in South Africa and related issues of symbolic power and violence.
Symbolic violence and power coincide within the evolving structures of
social imaginaries. This paper will explore various incidences of ‘corrective’ rape
in post-apartheid South Africa. The manifestation of violence that is enacted will
be shown to embody symbolic power in a homophobic form. The misappropriation of
symbolic power will be investigated in order to explore how it acts to both
police and protect current social orders. These orders will be shown to
incorporate the imaginaries that encapsulate ideas of race, gender and
sexuality in post-apartheid South Africa. The deviance from the path these
orders set will be understood in terms of their connection to the colonial past
of South Africa and the current identity it propagates. Variance in the forms
of rape, specifically its location in a public space and the collective nature
of gang rape, will be examined. Furthermore, the classification of corrective
rape as an abject form of violence will be shown to have merit. This
theoretical framework will be further utilised to elucidate a photographic
interpretation of the consequent trauma. Concurrently, this trauma facilitates
the construction of a new social imaginary. The subsequent clash of imaginaries
that proceeds will be explored. Thus, the nexus that exists between imaginaries
will be understood within the misappropriation of symbolic power that
ensues.