Learning to Unlearn. Koleka Putuma’s Poetry and Performances


Abstract


The aim of this article is to discuss some works of the South African poet, theatre practitioner, playwright, performer, feminist, and queer activist Koleka Putuma. The article’s main focus will be some poems from Putuma’s collection Collective Amnesia (2017), now a bestseller in South Africa. Collective Amnesia is the point of both arrival and departure of different kinds of art, such as poetry performances, video productions, and theatre plays. Putuma’s poems deal with historical issues and memory/ies, in particular with slavery and with the repressed presence of black women in South African history. By questioning the past and the way its narration registers and/or erases memories, Putuma produces a decolonial counter-discourse which conceives art as a political practice, that is a form of artivism, whereby notions of identities are complicated and extended rather than standardised and circumscribed. Drawing on Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality (1989), this article will show how in Putuma’s works borders and boundaries – in terms of gender, sexual orientation, religion, race, class, economic status, etc. – come to the fore in order to allow new and more flexible paradigms with which to narrate post-transitional South Africa. Many of the discourses emerging from her written as well as performed/filmed works promote a re-appropriation of black women’s bodies while endorsing their empowerment, also through a collective unlearning, a fundamental process if one wants to rewrite history/ies from female, feminist, and queer perspectives.

DOI Code: 10.1285/i22390359v64p155

Keywords: Koleka Putuma; South African women poetry; post-transitional South Africa; artivism; black feminism

References


Baderoon G. 2009, The African Oceans – Tracing the Sea as Memory of the Slavery in South African Literature and Culture, in “Research in African Literatures” 40 [4], pp. 89-107.

Boswell B. 2016, “Conjuring up her wholeness”: Post-transitional Black South African Women’s Poetry and its Restorative Ethic, in “Scrutiny2”, 21 [2], pp. 8-26.

Burger B. 2020, “Our respect for water is what you have termed fear”: The Ocean in the Poetry of Ronelda Kamfer and Koleka Putuma, in “Journal of Southern African Studies” 46 [1], pp. 23-38.

Byrne D.C. 2021, Water in the Anthropocene: Perspectives on Poetry by South African Women, in “Feminist Encounters” 5 [1]. https://doi.org/10.20897/femenc/9744 (8.3.2023).

Cardoso J. (dir.) 2016, Water. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dfq3C8GNrE (31.3.2023).

Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, § 9(3), 1996. https://www.gov.za/documents/constitution/chapter-2-bill-rights#9 (31.3.2023).

Crenshaw K. 1989, Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics, in “University of Chicago Legal Forum” 1. http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8 (7.3.2023).

Heith C. 2018, “I question why I understand what she has said”: Language and Decolonial Justice in Koleka Putuma’s Debout Poetry Collection Collective Amnesia, in “MoveAbleType” 10. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10053690/1/Chelsea%20Haith%20Collective%20Amnesia%2038-49.pdf (24.3.2023)

Hofmeyr I. 2007, The Black Atlantic Meets the Indian Ocean. Forging New Paradigms of Transnationalism for the Global South Literary and Cultural Perspective, in “Social Dynamics” 33 [2], pp. 3-32.

Hofmeyr I. 2019, Provisional Notes on Hydrocolonialism, in “English Language Notes” 57 [1], pp. 11-20.

Koleka Putuma 2021. https://www.kolekaputuma.com/ (31.3.2023).

Magona S. 2020, See Anew: Religion, Marriage and Funerals, in Allen S. and Nakamori Y. (eds.), Zanele Muholi, Tate Publishing, London, pp. 112-115.

Manyano Media 2023. https://www.manyanomedia.com/ (31.3.2023).

Mashile L. 2019, Making Poetry Live in Different Spaces, in Xaba M. (ed.), Our Words, Our Worlds. Writing on Black South African Women Poets. 2000-2018, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, Scottsville, pp. 219-230.

Pieterse A. 2018, Knowledge and Unlearning in the Poetry of Koleka Putuma and Sindiswa Busuku-Mathese, in “Scrutiny2” 23 [1], pp. 35-46.

Putuma K. 2019, Every / Three Hours. https://johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/2019/10/07/new-poetry-by-koleka-putuma-every-three-hours/ (20.3.2023).

Putuma K. 2020a, Collective Amnesia, Manyano Media, Cape Town.

Putuma K. 2020b, The Poet Protesting Femicide in South Africa. https://www.facebook.com/theglobalgoals/videos/the-poet-protesting-femicide-in-south-africa/856578925099749/ (31.3.2023).

Putuma K. 2021a, Hullo, Bu-bye, Koko, Come Ini, Manyano Media, Cape Town.

Putuma K. 2021b, No Easter Sunday for Queers, Manyano Media, Cape Town.

Putuma K. and Gxekwa N. 2019, Water. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27197706 (15.2.2023).

Putuma K. and Pedersen S.B. 2022, Performance, Poetry and the Word [Interview], YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlrDDsuwqzw (31.3.2023).

Serafini P. 2018, Performance Action. The Politics of Art Activism, Routledge, London.

Ward K. and Worden N. 2008, Commemorating, Suppressing, and Invoking Cape Slavery, in Coetzee C. and Nuttall S. (eds.), Negotiating the Past. The Making of Memory in South Africa, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 201-217.

Williams L. and Molebatsi N. 2019, Memory Politics: The Poetics of Reimagining Black Girlhood in a Post-Apartheid South Africa, in “National Political Science Review” 20 [1], pp. 101-115.

Word N Sound Live Literature Movement 2015, An Open Letter to TEDxStellenbosch by Koleka Putuma. https://wordnsoundlivelit.wordpress.com/2015/12/15/an-open-letter-to-tedxstellenbosch-by-koleka-putuma/ (7.2.2023).

Xaba M. 2019, Black Women Poets and Their Books as Contributions to the Agenda of Feminism, in Xaba M. (ed.), Our Words, Our Worlds: Writing on Black South African Women Poets, 2000-2018, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, Scottsville, pp. 15-61.


Full Text: PDF

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.
کاغذ a4

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0 Italia License.