Herstory, subjectivity and the public sphere in female narratives of the liberation struggle in Namibia: The case of Ndeshi Namhila, Lydia Shaketange, Libertine Amathila and Tshiwa Trudie Amulungu
type: CreativeWork
description: This study was an exploration of the autobiographical representation of the experiences of four Namibian women who participated in the country’s liberation struggle. The premise of this study was to interrogate how the autobiography genre was used to depict ‘herstory’, subjectivity and the public sphere in these female narratives. Herstory in this study portrays autobiography as a tool of narrating women’s personal history, analysed from the postcolonial-feminist perspective; subjectivity depicts how these women represented themselves as makers of history, taking cognisance of the fact that each individual is unique. Though they all participated in the liberation struggle, they exclusively narrate herstory as individuals through experience, memory, identity, space, and embodiment; as the material/ physical body of the narrator, “the body is a site of autobiographical knowledge, as well as a textual surface upon which a person’s life is inscribed (Smith & Watson, 2001, p. 37) and agency. The study was premised on the postcolonial-feminist and autobiography theories. These two theories helped in critiquing the distinctiveness of each narrative analysed in this study. The study employed a qualitative, desktop research design, whereby four Namibian female autobiographies were critiqued. The selected autobiographies were; The Price of Freedom by Namhila (1997), Walking the Boeing 707 by Shaketange (2009), Making a Difference by Amathila (2010) and Taming my Elephant by Amulungu (2016). The purposive sampling procedure using the criterion sampling technique was employed to select the four autobiographies analysed in this study. These works were chosen firstly, because they best informed the research questions presented in this study. The works tell ‘herstory’ during and after the colonial period. Also, through purposive sampling, the researcher was able to select autobiographies that provided the richest information as these autobiographies were most nteresting and manife…
abstract: This study was an exploration of the autobiographical representation of the experiences of four Namibian women who participated in the country’s liberation struggle. The premise of this study was to interrogate how the autobiography genre was used to depict ‘herstory’, subjectivity and the public sphere in these female narratives. Herstory in this study portrays autobiography as a tool of narrating women’s personal history, analysed from the postcolonial-feminist perspective; subjectivity depicts how these women represented themselves as makers of history, taking cognisance of the fact that each individual is unique. Though they all participated in the liberation struggle, they exclusively narrate herstory as individuals through experience, memory, identity, space, and embodiment; as the material/ physical body of the narrator, “the body is a site of autobiographical knowledge, as well as a textual surface upon which a person’s life is inscribed (Smith & Watson, 2001, p. 37) and agency. The study was premised on the postcolonial-feminist and autobiography theories. These two theories helped in critiquing the distinctiveness of each narrative analysed in this study. The study employed a qualitative, desktop research design, whereby four Namibian female autobiographies were critiqued. The selected autobiographies were; The Price of Freedom by Namhila (1997), Walking the Boeing 707 by Shaketange (2009), Making a Difference by Amathila (2010) and Taming my Elephant by Amulungu (2016). The purposive sampling procedure using the criterion sampling technique was employed to select the four autobiographies analysed in this study. These works were chosen firstly, because they best informed the research questions presented in this study. The works tell ‘herstory’ during and after the colonial period. Also, through purposive sampling, the researcher was able to select autobiographies that provided the richest information as these autobiographies were most nteresting and manife…
author: Simataa, Agnes A.
language: en
keywords: Female narratives, Liberation struggle in Namibia, Postcolonial-feminist, Herstory
date published: 2019
date modified: 2026-07-27T20:21:49Z
provider: University of Namibia
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Namibia

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/11070/2572