writing_womans_lives_symposium_paper_book_v2

USING AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVE TO (RE)CONCEPTUALIZE
“CULTURE”: AN ANALYSIS OF NKUNZI NKABINDE’S
GROUNDBREAKING MEMOIR
Sometimes I feel tense inside because what I was taught about Zulu culture as a child in
KZN is in conflict with what I have learned from growing up and living the life of a lesbian
in Meadowlands… My ancestor, Nkunzi, also influences my beliefs… As a sangoma I am
trained to see what is happening behind what we normally see… My life is not only for
myself, it is also for my ancestors, especially my ancestor, Nkunzi. 1
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Taylor RILEY *
Anthropologists look at human life and its complexities in, or at least in view of, a world that sees
something called culture in reductionist terms. These terms divide the West and the “rest” along
lines which are viewed as determining features of people and groups rather than dynamic relational
processes, some real and some imagined. Because of this, features like openness or intolerance
toward certain beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors are ascribed to different representations of the
cultural in a way that ignores notions of double‐consciousness and discredits human capabilities. This
silences real experiences which authenticate and evolve that which we might mislabel this thing
“culture”. Autobiography, I argue, retaliates against this silencing. Because of this it is a vital tool in
anthropological analysis, but could and should be seen as more than that. It is a means to unlock
invaluable substantive data in the social sciences as it is perhaps the closest that qualitative analysis
can get to “reality”. An excellent example of this is Nkunzi Nkabinde’s Black Bull, Ancestors and Me:
My Life as a Lesbian Sangoma.
I will therefore discuss how these contestations over the cultural have emerged in the postcolonial
contemporary. I will do so to advocate for autobiographical analysis as a methodological tool to
deconstruct and challenge them. I will use the example of Nkabinde’s book to substantiate this. I
would like to note that I am not attempting to discuss “culture” itself, whatever it may be, but rather I
am examining how the cultural is mobilized, misunderstood, and how we can interrogate it critically. I
am referring to contentions about modernity, progress, and other ideas within the context of the
contemporary hegemony of the West in international development, international law, and other
processes, and the mislabelling of sub‐Saharan Africa, individual states therein, and the people living
within them as homogenous and backward. I am speaking about postcolonial Africa both because it
differs from examples from Latin America, Asia, and other regions, and because it is relevant to the
geographical focus within my own research on knowledge, mainly in South Africa.
In her groundbreaking memoir, Nkabinde recounts her life story; the story of a healer (sangoma)
whose life is entrenched in spiritual communication, ritual, and the complex realities of life as a
woman who loves other women in contemporary South Africa. It is rooted in the past and present
and troubles the ways those ideas, events, and patterns linked by the fragile concept of culture are
represented. Her work in particular opens our eyes to more egalitarian understandings of intolerance
and acceptance. I would like to present some integral parts of Nkabinde’s autobiographical narrative
to show how autobiography is a crucial tool in understanding these complexities framed by the
“cultural” in a postcolonial world.
Interrogating the cultural within the (post)colonial
The term “culture” and the idea of culture are both contested and somehow anomalous. It was
Edward Said who said that “we live in a world not only of commodities but also of representations,
and representations‐ their production, circulation, history, and interpretation are the very element of
*
Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies