CLASS IN THE DISCOURSES OF MAGONAS,SINDIWE AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND FICTION

The origin of the tendency for class factors to be masked by the disco urse of race in recent autobiographies by black women can be traced to the 1970s and the reversal, in Black Consciousness thinking, of the h ierarchical binary of apartheid. This masking is evident at the level of experience in Sindiwe Magona's autobiography-at the level of discou rse it continues as, writing in the 1980s, she retells her life. Magon a's narration of selfhood is, however, comparatively conscious of the discursive foundations of subjectivity. Given the power of this discou rse to conceal as well as to reveal, the functioning of autobiography as a source of 'history from below' becomes questionable and it is sug gested that the autobiographical pact, as a reading pact, may mean tha t a writer like Magona is effectively more free to represent the exper ience and meaning of class through her fiction than in her autobiograp hy.