Debating virginity-testing cultural practices in South Africa: A Taylorian reflection

Abstract

In January 2016, a perennial row over virginity testing was renewed, pitting traditional adherents of Zulu cosmology and cultural practices against human rights advocates. The paper does not position itself within this debate. Rather, it adopts a  meta-perspective in order to understand why the debate arises in the first instance. Using Charles Taylor as a guide, it argues that the pre-modern porous self in the West was innately tied to a cosmology. The self was porous precisely because it saw itself as part of that cosmology. But with the onset of modernity, the self becomes increasing ‘buffered’, as a self that does not belong to that cosmology but is self-owned and self-regulated. This paper contends that the practice of virginity testing has to be seen in the light of the porous conception of the self and opposition to the practice in the light of the buffered conception. And as such, the opposition at base is seeking to preserve its specific view of the world against a practice it sees as undermining its implicit ‘theological’ perspective.

Keywords: Virginity testing, Zulu culture, Charles Taylor, cosmology, human rights, social imaginary, secular theology