21A.460J – Medicine, Religion, and Politics in Africa and the African Diaspora Lecture 10 8 March 2005 Discussion of first writing assignment: To what extent has Gilman taken an excessively psychoanalytical view of history? Is he psychologically determinist? Quote from article about Hottentot article: What is the space of encounter? How is it productive of ideas about the body, mind, culture? How does it reflect Europeans ideas about themselves, in addition to Europeans looking at Africans? How have Europeans been able to influence the ideas of the people they came into contact with? Essay: What is the space of encounter? What are methodologies, and how do they fail? What type of methodology would be fair and productive in presenting picture of the other? Currently, there is one heavily weighted on the side of Europeans as they have constructed certain kinds of knowledge of history and culture. To what extent has anthropology also come up with alternative ways to construct culture? Discuss the idea of the fetish (Pietz). What is happening in these particular encounters? What are the techniques applied to these processes of knowledge? Benefits, faults? To what extent can we know the truth of another culture, without having lived in it? Commensurability, universalism v. relativism. Idea that cultures cannot be evaluated by some general standard, but on their own terms (impossible to go across these social/culture boundaries?) Positivists or empiricists might argue that there is a universal truth that can be quantified. Is there an objective truth out there? Butchart claims that our fabrication of the African body is a result of the technologies Europeans bring to the table in analyzing and surveying the ‘African body.’ There can be no objective truth. Is there an objective reality out there? Science is a process of debate – all constructed to some degree due to the social context they arise in, i.e. ways to survey, test, evaluate, and think about knowledge produced. By using Foucault, try to question to what extent this is solely a process of sovereign power – in which medicine, or a colonial project, is a site of sovereign power. The techniques of power are diffused throughout the system, so it is hard to pinpoint the locus of power. Critique of Butchart is that still not seeing how Africans are shaping, creating, or resisting power that is being exerted on them. Power is not solely applied from an institute, not a strict dichotomy of powerful and powerless (more Marxist). Power is diffused throughout a system. 121A.460J – Medicine, Religion, and Politics in Africa and the African Diaspora Lecture 10 8 March 2005 The concept of “structural violence”: SV is a political term, looking at entrenched systems within society that can be ‘violent’ or repressive. Social violence can be as repressive, or as ‘violent’ as actual physically repressive acts. Public health perspective – infectious diseases, is a form of ‘violence’ as severe as war or physical violence. Structural approach is not Foucauldian approach – but fails to look at individual point of view – how individual is an object of power but also resist, change it. James critique – reifies violence, takes away individual’s sense of choice in engaging in actions and behaviors. Cannot say that all events are due to colonial violence, political repression – individuals still have choice in how to react. Both models – individual agency is not considered. SV more of a sense that people are passive victims of broader systems of inequality. F model – individuals are gradually drawn into reproducing systems of violence and inequality. Student presentation on Butchart: How African body was created by each of the regimes. Hygiene rules were imposed to apart that which must was deemed a threat to the colonial order. Gap between how environment affects the body, how African body is visualized? Note how each public health regime created/modified African body. During the mid-1900s the African body was viewed as distinct space, and explorations into how body is created. Separating healthy bodies from sick bodies. Sanitary sciences focused not on atmosphere making people sick, but that bodies could pollute atmospheric purity. Bubonic Plague – hygiene of location; segregation by bodies. African bodies considered part of the environment, therefore also threatening to Europeans. Pg. 135 Unhygienic should be remedied. Prevention and suppression methods used to control diseases. Control of the movement of substances – to control the substances coming into and out of the body. Greatest achievement is that body is a visible interface to fight disease. Could control external factors, such as food, but could not control personal, private factors, esp. women due to prostitution and supposed ‘amoral tendencies’. Campaign for cleanliness. Psychosocial space – centered around adoption of healthy habits. Fundamental health problem: how to win over an illiterate people (139). Utilization of arts and sciences of European technologies. Multi-factored perception of the causation of disease. Psychological research into deviations from normal: Everybody considered ill, because disease is no longer caused by environment, but also emotions, thoughts also considered causational aspects of disease. 221A.460J – Medicine, Religion, and Politics in Africa and the African Diaspora Lecture 10 8 March 2005 Instructor comments: Note the use of surveys as a research tool that have been biased towards depicting Africans as ill. Page 139 – bottom of page. Problematization of normal. To bring everyone into the eye of public medicine. The use of surveys (tool of Foucault’s biopower). Idea of attempting to map out within social realm, because disease is a source of social threat. Mary Douglas – idea that things can be separated into pure, dangerous, need to be kept out of social world because it is a threat is another way to view the development of society in South African society. Focusing on a body’s orifices is a way to contain the threat of something abnormal. Surveys another way to quantify abnormality, this time of the mind. Leviticus – law is a way to externally protect the social order. Medical institutions apply power externally to Africans but shift over time. What is fabricated differently in African body? A