Media Representations of Gender-Based Violence Against Black Women: A Decolonial Feminist Analysis

Thusi, Khanyisile S

Media Representations of Gender-Based Violence Against Black Women: A Decolonial Feminist Analysis

Thesis / Dissertation

2024

Abstract

Gender-based violence (GBV) is a well-known problem, with South Africa having one of the highest rates of GBV in the world. Additionally, South African media plays a role in how and what information about GBV is disseminated. This work looks at two case studies to investigate how the media represents GBV against black women in the South African context. It uses Decolonial Feminist theory to frame and contextualise current forms of violence against black women, to the colonial history of violence against them. This approach serves to call attention to the fact that GBV against black women does not exist simply as a problem of the present. Instead, there are narrative and physical continuities of the historical dynamics of power and domination against black women, that have founded GBV's present state, and which allow it to continue. These colonial narratives and the violences they perpetuate must be investigated in the various ways in which they may manifest themselves, such as through the media. This research draws to light the ways in which the media reinforces narratives that further marginalise black women, and in so doing, perpetuate black women and their bodies as sites of violence. The project explores how black women are decentred from their own stories and experiences of GBV, and how this decentring is normalised. It also seeks to further the work within Decolonial Feminism of conscientising society to the colonial legacies of violence perpetrated against black women. Finally, it poses questions concerning black women's positionality and safety within primary modalities of justice that exist within and from colonial structures of the law and criminality.