European Women’s Theological Research Network

Prof Nadar presented a paper to the Greek chapter of the European Women’s Theological Research Network, ‘Negotiating the ‘F-words’ ‘- Faith’ and ‘Feminism’ in a post-apartheid globalized university’.

Abstract

This paper focuses on the economy of knowledge production. Knowledge is indeed a commodified product – and the knowledge which emerges from our bodies seem to have little space in the marketplace of knowledge known as the globalised university. This lecture traces my more than a decade-long journey producing “bodies of  knowledge” on the subjects  of faith andfeminism – and explores how these “bodies of knowledge” are received, repudiated  and  renegotiated  within  a  post-apartheid  globalised higher education context. I draw on Grace Kyungwon Hong’s (2008) thoughts on black feminism and the politics of knowledge in the American university under globalization, and chart the similarities of her arguments for the South African university under globalization. Essentially I “illuminate the means by which epistemological considerations, as much as political and economic ones, constitute this university formation’s violence toward black feminists” through a repudiation of the f words – faith and feminism. Through a case study of my own academic journey I show the importance of an embodied politics of knowledge that challenges the globalised higher education context which seeks to sanitise the study of faith and feminism, by holding it hostage to theory; while dismissing its political potential for transformation.