Regarding Muslims by Gabeba Baderoon

Author:Gabeba Baderoon [Baderoon, Gabeba]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781868147694
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 22515511
Publisher: Wits University Press
Published: 2014-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

The history of a painful term: Reclaiming the P…Word

As Unconfessed reminds us, history can be recovered through proscribed words, a possibility also explored in radical forms of theatre. Reclaiming the P… Word is a collaboratively written and performed play in eight scenes by staff and students from the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. Simultaneously attentive to history and intensely personal, the play’s themes include the impact of colonial settlement at the Cape, the seventeenthcentury figure of Krotoa, the life of Sarah Baartman, the high levels of sexual violence in contemporary South Africa and assertions of sexual pleasure by black women. The final scene reclaims the word symbolised by the ellipsis in its title. Reclaiming the P…Word employs theatrical performance to present women’s voices in a range of registers to call attention to the damaging effects of misogynistic terms. The play’s supple and radiant use of language also reshapes the violent meanings of words.

In its themes, conception, writing and mode of performance, Reclaiming the P… Word forms part of a tradition of radical theatre-making in South Africa. The play was first performed in 2006 in response to the prevalence of sexual violence encountered by students and staff (Hames 2007). Even more than this physical context, the play addresses the mental universe for black women created by the constant pressure of sexualisation and sexual violence, as a result of which “sexual assault stalks the imagination of many South African women” (Mkhize et al. 2010: 4). In responding to the high levels of gender-based violence in the country, Reclaiming the P… Word draws on collaborative, non-realist modes of performance and “the use of private details as a means of public resistance” (Dolan 2010: 34) to challenge the norms that sustain violence.

What can the “p-word” tell us about ways of representing the black female body in South Africa? As Mary Hames, the director of the play, writes in her essay “Reclaiming the P…Word: A reflection on an original feminist drama production at the University of the Western Cape” (2007), the use of the “p… word” in the title alludes to the use of the word in South Africa to regulate women’s access to public space through its connotations of violence and threat. The word carries such derogatory connotations that it is unsayable in polite society. As a term of abuse and contempt, it is used against men as well as women as a means to disempower them. The play takes this common practice and makes it the basis of a powerful reclamation of the word, which ultimately comes to include pleasurable meanings.

Already in its title, the play signals the strategic way it engages with women’s bodies. Like the futurity implied in the curse of future justice that Sila casts on her owners in Unconfessed, in Reclaiming the P…Word tense is important; in this case, the sustained immediacy of the present continuous tense. Why, then, does the title of the play use the ellipsis in “p…word” instead of “poes”, the word it

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