Norms and Discourses of Class: Disciplining Young Educated Womxn’s Political Engagements in South Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACT Class-based analysis has become one of the key academic approaches to examining political behaviour in South Africa. As its usefulness in the context of high inequality is contested, this article seeks to contribute to the debates on its analytical potential based on interviews and group discussions with womxn 1 studying at the University of Johannesburg. Drawing on Foucauldian theorising on power of norms and discourses, and theories of intersectionality, this paper shows that the expectations attached to middle classness and eliteness in South Africa contribute to the maintaining of the existing systems of power by seeking to discipline young educated womxn away from becoming political change-makers. The effectiveness of this class-based disciplinary power is in its embeddedness in other systems of domination, including gender, race and age. Thus, only within an intersectional critical framework, does the category offer a useful lens for understanding how power impacts South African politics.