Nation, family, intimacy : the domain of the domestic in the social imaginary

Abstract

The institution of domestic work and the figures of the domestic worker (the ‘maid’) and the employer (the ‘madam’) – both of which are always raced and gendered – seem to carry a powerful and affective metaphoric and symbolic load in post-apartheid South Africa. The paper explores this phenomenon as linked to the dual nature of domestic work – as both a lawful and regulated contemporary social practice and a central feature of what may be termed the apartheid social imaginary – an implicit social understanding of the way in which things stand between fellow citizens in the terms of Charles Taylor. Domestic work is suitable for this kind of transposition because of its association with intimacy and family – both markers of nation – as well as its location in the social order of apartheid – the domestic domain. In order to trace some of the sources and meanings attached to contested understandings of domestic work, the paper examines the representation of white Afrikaans-speaking women’s subjectivity and agency in historical accounts – one of the particularistic strands through which the symbolic relationship between white female employer and black female domestic worker may be accessed. This is based on a symptomatic reading of Hermann Giliomee’s account – in his book The Afrikaners: Biography of a people –of white Afrikaans-speaking women’s subjectivity and the way in which this is constructed in relation to white men and black