ABSTRACT
The study draws on autobiographical writings of the South African anti-apartheid struggle to investigate representations of masculinity, work and gender relations. It identifies a common construction of masculinity in many texts across race, class and generation. This construction stresses autonomy, adventure, comradeship and a self-conscious location in history. This heroic masculinity is identified with a particular understanding of work as political work and links with a discourse that neglects the political interests, and differently contoured forms of political work by women. The study considers some similarities and differences between heroic masculinity and forms of work associated with violent masculinity, the subject of much more extensive research in South Africa to date.
The study is divided into four parts. The first section provides some background on South African autobiographical writings and looks at some of the methodological questions relating to the use of published autobiographical texts. The second section theorises questions of masculinity in the context of the distinctive social divisions of South Africa. The third section looks at portrayals of masculinity and work in South African autobiographical writing by men and women. The final section compares heroic and violent masculinities as they have emerged in different kinds of writing concerning South Africa under apartheid. This section also draws out some of the implications of the depictions of heroic masculinity and work with regard to gendered features of the transition to democracy.
