Towards a South-South Matriarchive

South Africa from a Living Genealogy

Abstract

This article explores my encounter with South Africa not as a mere research destination, but as a living relationship woven genealogically with other women of the Global South. In it, I locate the origin of this encounter in the mentoring relationship with my teacher Mónica Cejas, whom I recognize as part of a genealogy of Global South feminists and as a precursor of epistemological dialogues between Abya Yala and South Africa. From this origin, I examine how my own political, affective, and academic displacement toward this context is configured, and how, in that process, I begin to trace my own interests in relation to South Africa. These interests are articulated through my experience as a lesbian woman of Indigenous and Afro-descendant ancestry, and they resonate with the work of Zanele Muholi and Funeka Soldaat, with whom I establish political and affective affinities. From these thresholds, I enter the liminal trajectory that marked my encounter with South Africa, particularly when I decided to undertake my doctoral dissertation focused on the creative process of the Black South African artist Nomusa Makhubu. This research led me to a prolonged stay in South Africa, an experience that exceeded the forms of knowledge I had previously constructed through fixed notions of language and racism.