Power, desire and emotions in education: revisiting the epistolary narratives of three women in apartheid South Africa

In this paper I will attempt to consider emotions in the context of three women’s lives, whose
passion for education brought them together and then tore them apart along axes of difference
defined by race, class and age in apartheid South Africa. I am looking in particular into the correspondence between Lily Moya, Mabel Palmer, and Sibusisiwe Makhanya, published in 1987 by
Shula Marks and having since become an almost canonical reading in the ‘intersectionality’ literature. In revisiting this correspondence, I am exploring how culturally differentiated emotions, as inscribed in the three women’s epistolary narratives, can open up spaces for the subject of feminism to emerge. In this context, what I suggest is that reclaiming emotions within current educational discourses and practices can have significant effects not only on how lives are shaped and subjectivities formed, but also on how we can rethink about what feminism is and what it can do.

Citation:
Tamboukou, M. (2006) ‘Power, desire and emotions in education: revisiting the epistolary narratives of three women in apartheid South Africa’, Gender and Education 18 (3) 231-250.