Professor Nokuthula Hlabangane

Professor Nokuthula Hlabangane

Nokuthula Hlabangane was awarded a PhD in anthropology by the University of the Witwatersrand in 2012. My thesis is titled: The Political Economy of Teenage Sexuality in the Era of HIV/AIDS:  A case of Soweto. It was through this work that the journey of engaging in the philosophy of knowledge production and its attendant politics began. I draw from transdisciplinary literature to think about phenomena in all their complexity. To borrow from Linda Tuhiwai Smith, I am also hard-pressed to name a discrete area of interest. I, like her, find that I am more seized by the need to “research research”. I am acutely aware of the stated and unstated politics of research. In this sense, the idea of “voice” takes a differently-nuanced shape. For me, voice is not just about “what the people said”. It is also about what they have not said, cannot say, is unsayable when filtered through the ubiquitous framework of Eurocentricity. My ethics are about redress and restoration as I have a vested interest in decolonizing knowledge. I have written on subjects as diverse as social and epistemic justice, community and youth wellbeing, and am currently seized by a need to re-member by drinking from the gourds heretofore forgotten.