Zinhle ka’Nobuhlaluse (Manzini)

Professional Bio

Zinhle is an advanced dual-tile doctoral candidate in Philosophy and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. In addition to working on their dissertation, they coordinate and moderate the African Feminist Initiative’s dialogues and book talks. They are also the 2023 recipient of the Laura Richardson Whitaker Memorial Graduate Award. Zinhle’s dissertation project,  ‘Towards an Existential-Standpoint Reading of Blackwomen’s Autobiographies Under Apartheid South Africa’ draws from Frantz Fanon, Steve Biko and Jean-Paul Sartre’s analysis of racism as a system to enhance their limited approaches to understanding racism as a system by using an intersectional lens. By relying on Patricia Hill Collins’ development of Black feminist standpoint theory and exploration of intersectionality, the project combines the philosophical framework of existentialism with standpoint theory, developed as an ‘existential standpoint theory.’ Drawing from the autobiographies of two South African Black women, Mamphela Ramphele and Caesarina Kona Makhoere the project attunes us toward radically situated analyses that account for the multiple and intertwined forms of systemic domination.