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Re-Thinking Sexualities in Africa

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Re-Thinking Sexualities in Africa Arnfred Page 1 Wednesday, March 3, 2004 2:38 PM RE-THINKING SEXUALITIES IN AFRICA Edited by Signe Arnfred Arnfred Page 2 Wednesday, March 3, 2004 2:38 PM Indexing terms Women Gender relations Sexuality Culture Ghana Mali Namibia Senegal Tanzania Language checking: Elaine Almén Cover photo: Seydou Keïta, Mali, © Fondation Seydou Keïta © all other photos: the photographers and the Sokkelund African Collection © the authors and Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2004 ISBN 91-7106-513-X Printed in Sweden by Almqvist & Wiksell Tryckeri AB, 2004 Arnfred Page 3 Wednesday, March 3, 2004 2:38 PM Contents Re-thinking Sexualities in Africa: Introduction . 7 Signe Arnfred UNDER WESTERN EYES 1. Efundula: Women’s Initiation, Gender and Sexual Identities in Colonial and Post-Colonial Northern Namibia. 35 Heike Becker 2. ‘African Sexuality’/Sexuality in Africa: Tales and Silences . 59 Signe Arnfred 3. A Reflection on the Cultural Meanings of Female Circumcision. Experiences from Fieldwork in Casamance, Southern Senegal. 79 Liselott Dellenborg 4. Preventing HIV? Medical Discourses and Invisible Women . 97 Katarina Jungar and Elina Oinas 5. Whose ‘Unmet Need’? Dis/Agreement about Childbearing among Ghanaian Couples . 115 Akosua Adomako Ampofo PROBLEMS OF PLEASURE AND DESIRE 6. Kinky Politics . 139 Kopano Ratele 7. Opening a Can of Worms: A Debate of Female Sexuality in the Lecture Theatre. 157 Mumbi Mahcera 8. Paradoxes of Female Sexuality in Mali. On the Practices of Magnonmaka and Bolokoli-kela . 173 Assitan Diallo FEMALE AGENCY 9. Understanding Sexuality in Africa: Diversity and Contextualised Dividuality . 195 Jo Helle-Valle 10. ‘Prostitutes’ or Modern Women? Negotiating Respectabillity in Northern Tanzania . 211 Liv Haram Arnfred Page 4 Wednesday, March 3, 2004 2:38 PM 11. Masculinities, Sexuality and Socio-Economic Change in Rural and Urban East Africa . 233 Margrethe Silberschmidt 12. Re-Conceptualizing African Gender Theory: Feminism, Womanism and the Arere Metaphor . 251 Mary Kolawole Authors’ Biographies . 269 Photographers’ Biographies . 275 Arnfred Page 5 Wednesday, March 3, 2004 2:38 PM Photo: Abderramane Sakalay, 1958 Arnfred Page 6 Wednesday, March 3, 2004 2:38 PM Arnfred Page 7 Wednesday, March 3, 2004 2:38 PM 1. Re-Thinking Sexualities in Africa: Introduction Signe Arnfred The time has come for re-thinking sexualities in Africa: The thinking beyond the conceptual structure of colonial and even post-colonial European imaginations, which have oscillated between notions of the exotic, the noble and the depraved savage, consistently however constructing Africans and African sexuality as something ‘other’. This ‘other’ thing is constructed to be not only different from European/Western sexualities and self, but also functions to co-construct that which is European/Western as modern, rational and civilized. In a context of empirical studies as in this volume, re-thinking necessitates a double move of de-construction and re-construction, developing an analysis whereby, through critique of previous conceptualisations, attempts are made to approach materials in new ways, coming up with fresh or alternative lines of thinking. The chapters in the first section—Under Western Eyes—are various ver- sions of this type of exercise; they are all polemical against established, main- stream lines of thinking regarding gender and sexuality in Africa, and they all show in their different ways how alternative approaches produce different images —and concomitantly different realities. In one of the chapters (Jungar and Oi- nas) such mainstream lines of thinking, applied particularly in contexts of HIV/ AIDS investigations and with an undertone of ‘Africa is lost anyway’ are dubbed ‘dark continent discourse’. I find this a very fitting expression, which I shall apply in the following discussion. In the second section—Problems of Pleasure and Desire—the concerns are differ- ent, in some sense building upon the first section, taking the issues one step fur- ther. Here the focus is on investigation of areas, which have often been rendered invisible by mainstream thinking. The areas here under investigation are male and female lust and desire. A regards female sexual desire in particular, it has rarely been an object of analysis. If it has, it has generally been in a context of or with undertones of moral condemnation. Rarely has it been written about from the points of view of the women. In this section issues of male and female sexual lust and desire are analyzed and discussed by African male and female social scientists, based on analysis of empirical material, and with the benefit of experiences of the authors themselves. In the third section the focus is on Female Agency. From different professional inroads—literature and social anthropology—current socio-economic changes in African societies are investigated, particularly as impacting on gender power rela- tions, and different suggestions in terms of patterns of interpretation of current trends are presented. Uniting these chapters is an analytical concern with investi- 7 Arnfred Page 8 Wednesday, March 3, 2004 2:38 PM Signe Arnfred gating ways in which gendered effects of current changes on the continent are act- ed upon by men and women, co-producing future developments. In spite of overwhelming obstacles, such as widespread poverty and soaring HIV/AIDS in- fection rates, examples are given of women’s agency in ways which sometimes re- produce and at other times challenge patriarchal structures. With this introduction, by discussing theoretical issues of importance for each of these sections, I hope to provide a broader context in which to read and appre- ciate the individual contributions. Almost all of the chapters were first presented at the conference/workshop: “Contexts of Gender in Africa”organized in Upp- sala in February 2002 by the Nordic Africa Institute’s Sexuality, Gender and Society in Africa research programme. Under Western Eyes The title for this section is taken from Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s soon twenty years old but still current critique of Western feminist lines of thinking regarding women in Africa.1 In her paper Mohanty pinpoints the mechanisms of Western thinking as ‘othering’ Third World women: “It is only insofar as ‘Woman/Wom- en’ and ‘the East’ [or ‘Africa’] are defined as Others, or as peripheral, that (West- ern) Man/Humanism can represent him/itself as the center. It is not the center that determines the periphery, but the periphery that, in its boundedness, deter- mines the center. … Universal images of ‘the Third World woman’ (the veiled woman, chaste virgin etc.)—images constructed from adding ‘the Third World difference’ to ‘sexual difference’—are predicated upon (and hence obviously bringing into sharper focus) assumptions about Western women as secular, liber- ated, and having control over their own lives” (Mohanty 1991:74). Mohanty shows how in this process of ‘othering’, which is rooted in and based upon di- chotomies, the self is created by means of the other. Dangerous dichotomies As frequently shown and discussed by philosophers and social scientists over the last 20–30 years, much Western thinking from Enlightenment onwards has been constructed in terms of dichotomies and hierarchized binaries, where one is not only separate/different but also above/better than the other. Such figures of thought are part and parcel of the ‘dark continent discourse’. The importance of not only exposing dichotomies, but also dissolving them— effectively making them evaporate in order to create a space for radically different lines of thinking—is negatively demonstrated in a number of recent speeches by 1. The paper in question was first published in 1986, and again in 1988. An updated and modified version was pub- lished in Mohanty et al. (eds) 1991, from which I quote. In a recent paper: “Under Western Eyes” Revisited (2002) Mohanty discusses current intellectual and political challenges for feminist scholarship and organizing. Her cri- tique in the 1986 paper remains, however, valid. 8 Arnfred Page 9 Wednesday, March 3, 2004 2:38 PM Re-Thinking Sexualities in Africa: Introduction South African president Thabo Mbeki.1 Negatively, because Mbeki only exposes dichotomies, proceeding to turn them upside down, but he does not dissolve them. By failing to dissolve the dichotomies, Mbeki inadvertently supports and main- tains these lines of thinking. In the speeches in question, Thabo Mbeki goes out against the ‘dark continent discourse’: “It used to be that the superiority of those who are white and the inferiority of those who are black, was enforced, presented and justified as the natural order of things. Equally we can and must say that the superiority of those who are male and the inferiority of those who are female, was enforced, presented and justified as the natural order of things. As has been said, as long as the lions do not have their own historians, so long will the hunters emerge as heroic, mighty and right” (Mbeki 2001a). The quote is from a speech given at the opening of the NGO forum at the World Conference against Racism in Durban, August 2001. Mbeki goes on to talk about economic inequalities on a global scale, as created by globalization, and the extent to which these inequalities coincide with race: Put starkly, where this process of globalization has had negative consequences, its worst victims within countries and universally have been those who are not white. For these countless black people, this has not only meant that the development gap has grown even wider, it has also meant the further entrenchment of the structural dis-empowerment of billions of people, mak- ing it even more difficult for them to break out of the trap of poverty and underdevelopment (Mbeki 2001a). Mbeki locates racism in colonial history, talking about “the legacy of slavery, co- lonialism and racism”, but he is also acutely aware of colonial continuities in present day globalization, and of the continued existence of this colonial discourse. So far so good.
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