Out of Place

Out of Place offers
an in-depth exploration of Nuraan Davids’ experience as a Muslim
‘coloured’ woman, traversing a post-apartheid space. It centres on and
explores a number of themes, which include her challenges not only as a
South African citizen, and within her faith community, but as an
academic citizen at a historically white university. The book is her
story, an autoethnography, her reparation.

By embarking on an
auto-ethnography, she not only tries to change the way her story has
been told by others, transforms her ‘sense of what it means to live’
(Bhabha, 1994). She is driven by a postcolonial appeal, which insists
that if she seeks to imprint her own way of life into the discourses
which pervade the world around her, then she can no longer allow herself
to be spoken on behalf of or to be subjugated into the hegemonies of
others.

The main argument of Out of Place is that Muslim,
‘coloured’ women are subjected to layers of scrutiny and prejudices,
which have yet to be confronted. What we know about Muslim ‘coloured’
women has been shaped by preconceived notions of ‘otherness’, and
attached to a meta-narrative of ‘oppression and backwardness’. By
centring and using her lived experiences, the author takes readers on a
journey of what it is like to be seen in terms of race, gender and
religion – not only within the public sphere of her professional
identities, but within the private sphere of her faith community.