Tracing 19th-century scientific racism and its implications for contemporary gender discourses of religion in South Africa.

Abstract

This study hypothesizes that current Christian religious discourses and attitudes toward the black female body, such as religious identity marked through sexuality, purity culture, (in)fertility rituals, menstruation and the exclusion from communion or prayers, have been influenced and informed by 19th-century scientific assumptions of the black female body as 1) source of pollution, 2) hypersexual/oversexed, and 3) unruly and feral. These scientific assumptions of the black female body can be said to be the genesis of our current realities as (black) women in South Africa of gender-based violence, sexual assault and femicide (Roberts, 1997; Baderoon, 2014). In postcolonial South Africa, the black female body continues to be seen as the measure of moral order, and social order, conversion and civility are maintained through the regulation of (black) women's sexuality. How the black female body and sexuality are defined and controlled using Western and Christian religious discourse calls for the need for a decolonial feminist lens to make sense of the present by searching the past in hopes of constructing a new narrative about the black female body and a new hope for black women living in a world not meant for them. In this study, I am interested in tracing how the Church in South Africa viewed and still views the black female body through the lens of 19th-century scientific racism and sexism. To unearth the interconnections of race, science, and religion regarding the black female body, my study uses the feminist philosophy of science as a framework. Employing feminist philosophy of science will enable the study to illuminate the Black female as a gendered body, how 19th-century science has commodified, dehumanized, hypersexualized, and exploited this gendered body and how the colonial classifications of race and black(ness) have played a significant role in this. Drawing on selected colonial texts and scholars, I hope to show how their ideas shaped how people thought about race, gender and religion in the colonial period. As its methodology, my study employs Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA). This methodology hones on social justice issues and transformation. Similar to the aims of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis, my research hopes to challenge current Christian religious discourses that subordinate black women and repress their agency and autonomy in the name of culture and religion.