The feminine realm: the necessary condition for the possibility of the ‘unitary’ identity

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A practical route toward feminine empowerment: life skills coaching

Coaching is a relatively new concept in South Africa, which would enable the professional, black woman to become ‘empowered’ without repressing her feminine capabilities, and to accept her own inner diversity. Meyer & Fourie (2004:5) define coaching as “the systematically planned and direct guidance of an individual …by a coach to learn and develop specific skills that are …implemented…and …translates directly to …outcomes that are achieved over a short period of time”. Coaching, which is often practiced by psychologists, but which must be distinguished from therapy, creates the environment for individual development and personal as well as organizational change.
The very nature of the coaching process with the close personal contact between coach and client suggests a great potential for growth, trust and conflict resolution, both on a personal and professional level. With the tremendous changes in South African society since 1994, there has been an increasing demand for coaching to assist individuals and organizations with the transformation process. There is a recognized need for guidance from professionals who can support, encourage and help individuals and organizations to master changes and succeed in an increasingly competitive and challenging world. Coaching is essentially effective because it is a short-term intervention where the coach acts as the sounding board and works with the client to develop strategies and alternatives in order to deal with specific issues.

A deconstructive reading: semiotic eruptions and contradictions

Once the subject enters the Symbolic order, the chora will more or less successfully be repressed and can be “perceived only as pulsional pressure on or within symbolic language: as contradictions, meaninglessness, disruption, silences and absences” (Moi, 1986:13). However, abjection is not a simple repudiation, for the abject is that which “lies outside, beyond the set, and from its place of banishment, does not cease challenging its master” (Kristeva, 1987:2). The feminine aspects of the subject cannot be contained by the rational thetic structure of the symbolic order and threatens the sovereignty of this symbolic.

A subject in process: paradoxes and aporias: a surplus value

The complexities and ambiguities of the professional woman’s position acknowledges the aporias, the irresolvable contradictory tensions in her claim of being a ‘unitary’ subject, it also acknowledges the impossibility of assigning a singular and definitive meaning, of any “Truth” or value. The semiotic and symbolic are not simply binary oppositions, these domains are heterogenous and therefore disruptive of one another, which illustrates the logic of excess. “These two modalities are inseparable within the signifying process which constitutes language, and the dialectic between them determines the type of discourse … involved…because the system is always both semiotic and symbolic, no signifying system he produces can be either “exclusively” semiotic or “exclusively” symbolic, and is instead marked by an indebtedness to both” (Kristeva, 1984:24).

A dual perspective on the construction of the ‘empowered’ professional

black woman In Chapters Five and Six, the aim is to empirically confirm the Oedipal model as explicated in this chapter. Chapter Five is concerned with the analyses of two autobiographical novels, one written during the apartheid era, You can’t get lost in Cape Town (Zoe Wicomb), 1987 and one written in the post-apartheid era, Our generation (Zubeida Jaffer), 2003. Autobiographical writing has specifically been selected for the analyses, as it is has become critical commonplace to regard autobiographies written by South African black authors as a social document, which emerge from a particular socio-political milieu.
An autobiography can thus be read as a record of social and historical events and as such should be regarded as expressions of a collective social awareness rather than just the expression of the unique experience of a single individual. Ngwenya (1996:28) asserts that autobiographies yield “illuminating sociological insights about interpretation and of (responses) to social reality held in common by members of a particular class or groups located within that class”. It thus follows that the analyses of the construction of the ‘empowered’ narrators reflect the changes and transformation of their broader society.

TABLE OF CONTENTS :

• CHAPTER 1: The rationale and outline of the study
  • 1.1 Introduction
  • 1.2. The outline of the study
• CHAPTER 2: Constructions of subjectivities: challenging perspectives
  • 2.1 Introduction: a positivist perspective on subjectivity and empowerment
  • 2.2 The birth of the modern subject of a positivist psychology: a history
  • 2.3 The subject of a positivist psychology: a unitary, homogenous essence
  • 2.4 The inner-outer split
  • 2.5 The ‘death’ of the modern subject: a decentering process
  • 2.6 A paradigm shift: postmodernist perspectives
    • 2.6.1. The turn to context
    • 2.6.2 The discursive turn and subjectivity
    • 2.6.3 Postmodernism and power
  • 2.7 A feminist perspective
    • 2.7.1 The feminist project
    • 2.7.2 The gendered nature of knowledge
  • 2.8 Postmodern feminism: a ‘politics of difference’
    • 2.8.1 Behind a feminist ‘politics of difference’: a rationale
    • 2.8.2 Embodiment as a marker of difference: thinking the body
  • 2.9. The ‘politics of racial difference’
  • 2.10 A critical psychology
• CHAPTER 3: The discursive subject-on-trial
  • 3.1 Introduction
  • 3.2 The ‘empowered’ professional woman as ‘unitary’ subjectivity: tales of the ‘thetic’
  • 3.3 Split subjects
  • 3.4 Identification and investment
  • 3.5 Deconstruction and genealogy
  • 3.6 The feminine realm: the necessary condition for the possibility of the ‘unitary’ identity
  • 3.7 A challenge to the mastery of the ‘unified’ subject
  • 3.8 A struggle for independence: the logic of abjection
  • 3.9 Misplaced abjection and oppression: the effacement of the feminine
  • 3.10 The bridge of love: primary identification
  • 3.11 Processual subjectivity: a sujèt-en-proces
  • 3.12 The subject as site of radical contradiction
  • 3.13 New configurations
• CHAPTER 4: Methodology
  • 4.1 Introduction
  • 4.2 The Oedipal model: a discourse of Sameness and Difference
  • 4.3. Constructing the ‘empowered’ professional black woman: a thetic subjectivity
    • 4.3.1 The split subject: subject/object
    • 4.3.2 A struggle for independence: abjecting the (m)Other, the precondition of a ‘unitary’ subjectivity
    • 4.3.3 A deconstructive reading: semiotic eruptions and contradictions
    • 4.3.4 A subject in process: paradoxes and aporias: a surplus value
    • 4.3.5 A dual perspective on the construction of the ‘empowered’ professional black woman
• CHAPTER 5. Literary perspectives: two tales of constructing the ‘empowered self’
• CHAPTER 6: The ‘empowered’ professional woman: a deconstructive analysis of nine interviews

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BEYOND EQUALITY AND DIFFERENCE: EMPOWERMENT OF BLACK PROFESSIONAL WOMEN IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA