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"Who
am I?" by Gerrie Snyman
The defining, defined and definite body One of the objections raised against current biblical or theological scholarship in South Africa is that it is too closely tied up with European and North-American scholarship to be labelled "African" in any meaningful sense of the word (cf. West 1997:101).1 For many years, it has found considerable approval in certain South African circles (cf. Deist 1994). Moreover, it is usually reinforced by visiting European and North-American scholars whose expectations are frustrated when they do not find a deliberate "African" slant in Euro-African scholarship. Yet, in this labelling process the term "African" mostly eludes definition. However, it is to be expected that whatever would be regarded as "typically" African, would reinforce an African stereotype. The situation of cultural stereotyping is not unique. The Palestinians face a similar dilemma. Christian Palestinians are expected to be more Islamic, because in the mind of Europe, Palestine is regarded as a Muslim country. The Palestinian Christians are regarded as "latecomers". Much of the Western Christian support for Israel is based on the assumption that the Jews have a right to their country. Compared to this Jewish right, Palestinian Christians are regarded as intruders, although their presence dates from apostolic times!2 Most Europeans currently living in South Africa do not do so by choice. They (we) are here because of the colonial and imperial tendencies of Europe which have unfolded since the seventeenth century. To Europe we will forever be a reminder of their fabrication of the African body, a gaze that led to an industrial revolution in South Africa, although resulting in an exploitation of mineral wealth, a dehumanisation of people, and a destruction of African traditions. Given the development, the destruction as well as the fact that the last visible vestiges of European power are now gone, how does one negotiate the European presence in South Africa? Have we come full circle, as Alexander Butchart (1998:126) claims in a study on the European fabrication of the African body? He says: "So, just as the African personality has coalesced under the earlier regime to invent the African as a dangerous individual, it was now the personality of the white man that was the source of danger, corruption and alienation." The present South African condition, six years after the official demise of apartheid, is typical of the postcolonial situation. Sugirtharajah (1998:93) describes this condition as an "active confrontation with the dominant system of thought, its lopsidedness and inadequacies, and underlines its unsuitability for us". It is a process of a cultural and discursive emancipation from all dominant political, linguistic, and ideological structures. It is a subversive stance towards the dominant knowledge, a discursive resistance to imperialism, imperial ideologies, imperial attitudes and their continued incarnations in such wide-ranging fields as politics, economics, history and theological and biblical studies. Hence the insistence on being deliberately "African" and not "European". In this active confrontation the new dominant political system seems to be fabricating the body of the former "colonial" power in the very same manner as it was once fabricated by the former 'colonials'. And the forces now behind the new power deemed it necessary to counter this fabrication with a liberation war. Apartheid and gender discrimination were based on the ontology of race and gender. In recent public debates, it appears that this very ontology is still firmly in place, although the situation is reversed. If the fabrication of each other in our minds is based on the ontology of race and gender, I am not sure we have escaped the paradigm of the past. In this article the focus will fall on the notion of the fabrication of the Other. The word "fabrication" suggests that, in one's mind, one forms a picture of what the other person is. Because one sees the other person as a body, it is easy to regard those attributes attached to the other as ontological features. The moment one starts thinking in terms of ontological features, the fabricator exercises power over the fabricated. The article takes its cue from Emmanuel Levinas' idea of the encounter with the other as Other. The encounter with the Other usually takes place in a situation where the command "thou shalt not kill" proves to be a futile demand (cf. Levinas 1985:89). Our recent past can be characterised as an encounter filled with hate, violence and disdain for people whose bodies differ in terms of gender and race. However, in the postapartheid situation it seems as if the more one takes the Other seriously, the more people's disdain for each other is perpetuated by the discourse, sometimes deliberately, sometimes inadvertently.
In a Semeia volume exploring the notion of the Bible and ethics of reading, Danna Nolan Fewell and Gary Phillips (1997) refer to the following story which shaped their need to take stock of what constitutes reading: 'The [...] story [...] took place in an Introduction to the Bible class (the basic introductory Bible course) at Perkins School of Theology. The class was studying the institution of the lex talionis in Genesis 9:5-6 and Jesus' variation on the law in Matthew 5:38-39. The question was posed: If the lex talionis were a law meant to constrain violence, was Jesus' admonition to turn the other cheek meant to function the same way? An affirmative answer led to the next question: Does "turning the other cheek" actually constrain violence? One after another some twenty students agreed, "Yes, by turning the other cheek, one refuses to respond to violence with more violence and this violence is constrained." This refrain echoed around the room until finally a woman, who had in her C.P.E. training dealt with many battered women, spoke up and said, "You people are so naive. This text has killed more women than any of us here would care to count".' Does Matthew 5:38-39 say one should resist violence at all costs? Traditionally this "hard saying" of Jesus is thought to describe a course of action in the face of an unprovoked assault that provokes immediate resentment and retaliation. F.F. Bruce (1985:68-71) suggests this saying counteracts the lex talionis of the Old Testament. Instead of retaliation, Jesus is thought to say that one should not retaliate at all. Being hit in the face is one thing. Being raped is quite another. Does this mean that a woman should allow the rapist to have his way? From a rape perspective, it appears that Bruce's understanding creates a false consciousness, namely that violence can be stopped by turning the other cheek. Rape is a crime of violence through which a male tries to exert his power over a female. It all depends on who has the power. In his book Domination and the arts of resistance. Hidden transcripts, James Scott (1990:4) argues that a public transcript is usually produced in close conformity with the way the dominant group or ruling elite would wish to have things appear. Thus, if a particular male domination seems to be intolerant towards female disobedience of any kind, in terms of Bruce's understanding it would mean complete subordination of women, even in cases of violence. When the public transcript is defined by male superiority,3 one can expect the dominated to be forced to accept the exertion of "sovereign power", even over their bodies. In his book Discipline and punish (1977) Foucault identifies two systems of power:
Sovereign power exists to the extent that it is visible to those over whom it is exercised. In monarchic times, sovereignty had to be observed, either in pomp and ceremony, or in its marking of the body of the criminal in the process of punishment. Vestiges of this kind of power can still be seen in the way people talk about power: It is something to be seized, something which can be overthrown, resisted or succumbed to. Power is equated with force, which coerces, constrains, represses, blocks or negates (cf. Armstrong 1987:68). The traditional understanding of "turning the other cheek" reflects this kind of power when referring to domestic relationships where the husband is thought to have "power" over the woman, because he is the "head" of the household. "Head", in terms of the story worlds of the Bible, should be understood in the way power was exerted over people, by kings, dictators and despots. Power was, in the most of these cases, quite authoritarian. Hence the authoritarian father figure in the household. Milavec (1995) argues that this saying of Jesus (turning the other cheek) could have had a very pertinent function comparable to the life of the Cynic.4 The abusive behaviour that a Cynic experiences, corresponds to the examples of resistance explained by Matthew and Luke. "Turning the other cheek" could happen in the following context: The son becomes a member of the Jesus movement and the father wants him to withdraw. When all arguments fail, the father backhands his son, an act that finally erodes the filial bond between father and son. The son then literally turns the other cheek and indicates to his father that his attempts to shame his son into servility have failed. Wink (1991) suggests that the text breaks a cycle of humiliation with humour and ridicule, exposing the injustice of the system. It recovers for the poor, the marginalised, and the subordinate some measure of initiative that can force the dominating group to see the suppressed in a new light.5 To the woman counsellor in Fewell and Phillip's example, the traditional understanding of Jesus' saying is laden with political repression and demagoguery that causes the victim of domestic violence to collude with her own oppression. She expresses what Foucault would call a disciplinary power. In her resistance to sovereign power, she draws her audience's attention to the consequences of the exertion of sovereign power for the female body. She asks, in effect, whether this reading can be true if the consequence is death. In other words, the question is how ethical a particular reading of the Bible is if it condemns to death people in abusive relationships, or subject people to inhumane life conditions, as the case was under apartheid. Or, one may ask, how ethical is reading when it is aimed at excluding women from full participation in church structures? The anecdote of the woman counsellor illustrates how oppressive and negative a public transcript can become when the effects of a particular reading are ignored. According to Scott (1990:71) the dominant ideology conceals or misrepresents aspects of social relations that would be damaging to the interests of the ruling elite. If the traditional understanding of Matthew 5:38-39 is defined by a male class (this would not be far-fetched, given the dominant power of male gender within the church) it is possible that the effect of their reading would not come to their attention that easily. And take note, it is a woman who made the class attentive to the destructive effects of the traditional understanding. Foucault defines disciplinary power6 in terms of a prison, the "Panopticon", that consists of a circle of cells with a tower in the middle from which prison wardens could gaze freely at the prisoners (1977:200). Since the guards gaze at the prisoners, the guards remain faceless, hidden behind shutters. They do not represent the king, as they themselves are monitored by the superiors in the prison hierarchy. In a hierarchy of automatised and disindividualised power (1977:202), movement is limited by the gaze of an other. It is a power that manifests itself through a relationship of observations. The woman's gaze on a traditional reading of the Bible, questioning its truth, throws a disciplinary gaze on our Bible reading, petitioning us to think about the kind of body we are constructing to receive that other blow. She asks for a surveillance of the body, in order to see the effect of power on that body. By merely stating the fact that the traditional reading of Matthew 5:38-39 has sent many women to their death, she made visible the object who is supposed to turn the other cheek as a target of violent power. Let me now turn the attention to the fabrication of the body in terms of race and gender; a fabrication of the Other of which the effects on the Other are overlooked.
In January 2000, at the National Synod of the Gereformeerde Kerke in Suid-Afrika (Reformed Churches in South Africa - RCSA) the RCSA reaffirmed7 their 1988 decision that women would not be eligible to serve in the office of a minister, elder or deacon. This decision was based on what they believed to be biblical evidence. In a certain sense they are correct: in the Bible stories and events referred to in their decision, women play a minimal role in management affairs. The patriarchal nature of ancient Israelite and early Christian societies made it impossible for women to play a significant role in the structures of decision processes. The societies' male hierarchical structure has found a resonance in the churches' religious structures. But this does not mean 'the Bible is right'.8 A small follow-up report by Jackson (2000b:6) illustrated the banality of the churches' decision with great acumen. In Philipvale, a small town near Philippolis in the Northern Cape, the minister of the latter worked and succeeded to get enough people to reestablish a church that had perished. The only problem was that there were not enough men around to become elders and deacons. The question was whether the establishing of the new congregation should be postponed indefinitely, or whether women could be appointed in the offices of deacons or elders. The synod answered that there could be no congregation when there are no competent men to fill the offices.9 How did the female members of the RCSA respond? Of the two that wrote letters to Beeld during the Synod, only one was a member of the RCSA. She (Van Dyk 2000:16) was very disappointed and expressed a concern that there would be no future generation within the RCSA. Another, Büchner (2000:8), who is not a member of the RCSA, asked how long women would accept this open discrimination by the church while their existence as human beings were being injured and their voices silenced.10 What are the consequences of the ruling that no church is possible without men? To understand the consequences, it would be fruitful to inquire into another discourse that put South African men in the dock, namely the rape advertisement by Charlize Theron that caused an uproar, a banning and an unbanning!
Charlize Theron is a South African actress that found fame in Hollywood in pictures in which her nudity and on-screen sexual exploits raised many an eyebrow. The text of the radio as well as the television advertisement that she recited was as follows: 'Hi, I'm Charlize Theron. People often ask me what the men are like in South Africa. Well, if you consider that more women are raped in South Africa than in any other country in the world; that one out of three women will be raped in their lifetime in South Africa; that every 26 seconds a woman is raped in South Africa; and perhaps worst of all, that the rest of the men in South Africa seem to think that rape is not their problem; it is not easy to say what the men in South Africa are like. Because there seem to be so few of them out there.' The advertisement places the South African male in a very tight spot. The Advertising Standards Board found the advert to be discriminatory on the basis of gender. It was felt that it casts half of South Africa's males as rapists and the other half as men condoning rape. On the Internet, there was a lively discussion on this advert on the Woza-website. Most of the respondents were women, and because they are the usual victims of rape, they did not express any concern about the stereotyping of men the advert is thought to have conducted. Most of their complaints were aimed against the American accent of the South African-born Hollywood star. Very few regarded Theron's performance as ironical in the sense that the pictures in which she performed could be regarded as a champion of rape in itself, given Hollywood's own cheap portrayal of sex and violence. Only a few of the men who participated in the discussion thought that the advert was inoffensive, arguing from the perspective of the deed and its effects. The majority, however, contested the portrayal of the male as a rapist. They argued that there are men who respect women, and that silence about rape does not necessarily mean one condones rape. They objected to being labelled as not caring and to being relegated to the status of a common criminal. These objections were met with indignation and more killer arguments:
For the sake of the argument, let us consider the possibility that the advert is right, namely that there is a link between men's attitude towards rape and the aspect of their gender. What significance would that give to a suggestion that the presence of at least a male member is a prerequisite for the establishment of a church? The following absurdity arises: The presence of a man as a prerequisite for the creation of a church structure introduces the community of female believers to the possibility of rape, no matter how remote. In other words, is a church structure only feasible when heterosexual rape is possible? Are we dealing here with the dark side of the church despite the numerous moral prerequisites proposed for the office of elder or deacon or minister? The nature of the debate (aggravated by the nature of the electronic bulletin board) has created the impression that if one does not speak out against rape, one is guilty of condoning it, and if one speaks out against the advert, one stands accused of having at least a guilty conscience or at most, being a rapist.
A musical interlude: a prisoner's body The dilemma posed by Theron's anti-rape advert reminds me of the catch-22 situation in which the main character, Jean Valjean, finds himself in Victor Hugo's novel-turned-Broadway-musical, Les Misérables. He is sentenced to jail for stealing bread. Receiving parole only after 19 years, as well as a second chance by a bishop from whom he stole some silver (and thus broke his parole conditions), Valjean picks up the pieces of his life in the town of Montreuil-sur-mer where he becomes a wealthy factory owner as well as mayor of the town. In the meantime, Javert, the antagonist in the story and former prison warden, conducts a lifelong search for Valjean. In order to throw Javert and Valjean together, a problem is created: it is discovered that one of the workers (Fantine) in Valjean's factory has an illegitimate child. The foreman, whose attentions she rejects, sacks her. Desperate for money, she joins the prostitutes with whom she gets into a fight. Javert arrests her, but the mayor arrives and demands that Fantine, who is apparently very ill, be taken to hospital. Then the mayor rescues a man pinned down by a runaway cart. Javert, in turn, is reminded of the abnormal strength of the convict he has been looking for for the past eight years, and which he believes he has just recaptured. Valjean, however, cannot see an innocent man going to prison. In court he confesses that he is the man Javert is looking for, namely prisoner 24601. And this is his song:
The song brings forward what can be called an anatomy of power: how the body exists in people's minds. Javert saw a man, took him to be Jean Valjean, and arrested him. In his mind, he fabricated the body of Jean Valjean, and at the first opportunity of physical resemblance, he identified an objective body with the one he fabricated in his mind. Valjean takes up the moral question concerning the mistaken identity. He has to decide what his responsibility is (à la Levinas) by looking the mistakenly identified man in the face as the Other. By keeping quiet, Valjean will remain a free man, but he will also be sending an innocent man to prison. By speaking out, the other man might become free again, yet Valjean will once more be subjected to Javert's assault on his body in the nineteenth century penitentiary:
These words remind one of the male position vis-à-vis the Theron advert. Despite the harsh impact that ensured male awareness of the problem of rape, the rhetoric provided a female gaze on men. This gaze from female perspectives fabricated men as Other and created a relationship of power through which a certain ideology could be put forward with the very least resistance. This is what rhetoric is about: Fabricating the Other in order to create a relationship of power by which the Other can be subordinated to the ideology one expresses. In the female fabrication of the male, the latter was scape-goated and left without any defence. In this way the Other can be successfully silenced. Exactly how does gender influence one's being as a sexed or gendered body? The advert works on the assumption of knowledge of 'what it is' to be male or female. Male behaviour is linked to the ontology of one's gender. In contrast, the negative reaction to this advert indicates that it is perhaps more accurate to argue that the sexed body is a performance rather than a fact. In Foucault's panopticon, the body is continuously observed. It would be fair to argue that the male body fabricated by the advert is indeed a knowable entity possessed with particular attributes and characteristics. The fabrication is a construction based on what women see. But, also in Foucaultian terms, the body is what it is perceived to be (cf. Armstrong 1987:66). It can be otherwise, provided the perception is different. The problem therefore consists not in the nature of the body that is perceived (that is, the male as rapist or racist), but rather in the process of perception that allows the body to be apprehended as rapist or racist. It is to this process the discussion now turns: why does the media seem to present readers with what appears to be racial stereotypes?
The Human Rights Commission received a request from the Black Lawyers Association and the Association of Black Accountants of South Africa to wage an inquiry into what they believed to be racism within the media. Two reports were commissioned, one by an independent researcher, Claudia Braude (1999)11 and another by the Media Monitoring Project (1999). The Braude report states that the research into racism in the media was designed
Braude (1999:15) claims to having used two theoretical paradigms in her "cultural studies" approach:
She (1999:16) wanted to test whether and how the media functions as an ideological agency that plays a central role in the maintenance and reproduction of racial or class domination and social inequality. She also wanted to inquire into the role the media played in the consolidation and fortification of racial values and attitudes of its media members. In other words (Braude1999:16), "to consider both the extent of racism in the media itself, as well as the way the media frequently serves as a communication about racism". Reading through her report, I was reminded of the timely warning of stereotyping in an essay in a book exploring a cultural studies perspective on the production of meaning (Exum and Moore 1998). One of the problems detected in a cultural studies approach is the effect the individualism of contemporary Western culture has on characterisation. Margaret Davies (1998:415) warns of the danger of breaking down characterisation into a single dominant trait. Arguing that this boils down to stereotyping, Davies (1998:415) cautions that any attempt to discuss cultural aspects of life obligates a reflection on those detail or possible generalisations that are difficult either to define or to encompass. Stereotyping in contemporary culture is primarily found in popular fiction, radio, television and newspaper presentations of social and political groups. It is society's way of talking and thinking in order to clarify experience (Davies 1998:430). Although useful in learning to make initial distinctions, Davies contends that one should recognise its limitations and guard against rigidity. Individualism requires a kind of justice that gives a just appreciation of individual complexities. In the past failure to give justice to individual complexities has led to the stereotyping of other people, giving rise to anti-Semitism and European racism. However, notwithstanding Braude's complaint about the racial stereotyping of black people in the media (which she describes as owned by white supremacists), her own portraying of this "white media" results in a stereotyping from which one finds it difficult to escape. Her failure to define her understanding of racism, added to her continuous reference to the media as owned by white supremacists as well as her inclination to find any evidence that would support a prejudice, combined with her stereotyping of newspaper reporting (every white journalist in any circumstance shares the trait of white supremacy), suggest the formation of a possible racial stereotype. Her failure to take into account the complexity of individualism in the press, and her resulting subscription to an implied definition of racism that is group-based, reinforce the perception of her stereotyping of the media as consisting of white supremacists. Howard Barrell (2000), political editor of the Mail & Guardian newspaper, explains as follows the dilemma she creates in her study: There are two races, the one black, the other white. Each of them has its own racially determined language, art, religion, view of history. Anti-racism is the belief that these two groups are equal. Racism is the belief that the white group is intrinsically superior to the black group. In these terms, racism is something that is acquired over centuries. It manifests itself in overt bigotry as well as in unconscious attitudes that have seeped into white consciousness over years of white domination. The latter is very hard to recognise.12 Barrell argues that Braude's understanding of racism allows the existence of exclusively black structures. Although racially discriminatory, they are not deemed racist because the latter is only possible in the context of white superiority. Racism can only happen amongst white people. Moreover, Western culture is infected by a belief of the innate superiority of white culture. Even when one is unaware of this infection, people belonging to the Western culture are unconscious or subliminal racists. Hence Braude's research into traits of "subliminal racism" and her understanding of a photo depicting Maribou storks at a refuse container in Kampala, Uganda as an example of subliminal racism. In The Star of 25 June 1999, a front page photograph of two birds under the title "Trash for two" was published. The caption read as follows: "Pavement café ... a pied crow and a Maribou stork, a bird commonly seen on the streets and pavements of Uganda's capital, Kampala, are seen keeping a proprietary eye on a city refuse container whose scraps keep city birds like themselves on the wing." Braude (1999:136) read this photo in the light of the previous day's headline in The Star concerning a decaying infrastructure and the limited availability of refuse bags. Hence the following reception:
On the face of it, it is an imaginative allegorical interpretation of a caption and photograph in a newspaper based on a recurring theme reported that week in the paper. The validity of Braude's interpretation of the photo and the caption rests upon the link she draws between the birds and African people and the refuse container and the city of Johannesburg. Her allegorical analysis is built upon a text-immanent investigation of the photo in terms of other texts within the newspaper, read with a presumption of what the white supremacist editor had in mind. An allegory assumes two levels: the concrete narrative level and the moral, spiritual and psychological ideas behind the concrete narrative. However, to function as an allegory, there should be a clear link between the two levels. The allegorical is part of the structure of the work and not something added to the interpretation (cf. Malan 1992:8). Unfortunately, Braude provides no other support for her decision to make these two comparisons underlying her allegory. She assumes that race determines culture and texts. Thus, the photo and caption had to have a racial content, which she constructs in the mind of the white editor as the Other which she deems a racist by definition. It should be noted that criticism of the report never denied the existence of racism in the media. The problem is the way in which Braude perceived the "Other". On the one hand, she appears to presume the existence of exactly that which she wanted to demonstrate: racism in the media (cf. Van Niekerk 2000) and on the other hand, her demonstration results in a kind of stereotyping of the antagonists. Barrell (2000) observes: 'A critic may conjecture - though never prove, because he or she has no gift of insight into another's mind - the presence of cultural and other subjective judgments in a particular story or media product. But the attribution of motive to the writer of such a story - unless it is blatantly rhetorical in tone or contains hate speech - is still more dubious.' Juxtaposed to her own "subliminal" definition of racism (regarded by her critics as based on power and self-interest), is the one that would turn her latent understanding of racism into racism itself! If racism is the belief that races have distinctive cultural characteristics determined by hereditary factors and that these characteristics endow some races with an intrinsic superiority, the depiction of a certain group of people as unable to escape their culture's construction of themselves as superior, constitutes an act of racism. Racism, after all, links to race rights and privileges over which one has no say.
Charlize Theron's anti-rape advert and the ensuing debate created a moral distinction between men and women: men are, in principle, rapists. If they do not act against rape, one can assume they are rapists, and if they speak against the rape advert, the shoe fits anyway. Similarly, and perhaps more poignantly, the moral distinction effectuated by defining racism as inherent to Western culture in general, turns the issue of race into an ontological feature from which one can only escape through death. Except when one defines racism as "an ideology, a system of social, economic and political power structures that perpetuates and justifies itself by creating racist stereotypes and fostering attitudes of racial prejudice" (cf. Kritzinger 1999:4). Then the racist body becomes a performance which one can change. What kind of defence is open in the face of an Other whose gaze is so consumptive that it leaves one totally incapacitated? Barrell (2000) argues that Braude's kind of definition leaves one with only three kinds of white people: overt racists, racists who have acknowledged their guilt and unconscious racists who continue to deny their racism. Behind the gaze on men or white people as the Other there is a tendency to take total control of the Other, that would deny them any autonomy. Here is a nifty power play playing itself out. When race (and gender) determine(s) culture and intellect, even though the cultural products are equal, there is still a moral distinction:
In both cases, one's rapist and or racist inclinations should be acknowledged. There is no escape. The Other is castrated. In the Panopticon, power has become efficient. The prisoner who recognises his or her own subjection to the field of visibility assumes responsibility for the constraints of power. Foucault (1977:202) argues that the inmate actually makes these constraints play upon himself. He (or she) inscribes in himself the power relation in which he or she simultaneously plays both roles. The prisoner becomes the principle of his or her own subjection. Maybe this is the problem in the current debate on gender and racism: The South African "inmates" refuse to acknowledge the gaze provided by the wardens of gender equality and racism. It is not a case of failing to recognise gender or racial discrimination, but a refusal to be associated with someone else's observation, a refusal to inscribe in themselves a power relation negating their autonomy.
Randall Bailey of the International Theological Centre in Atlanta (USA) reminds us of the all too painful Pauline gaze aimed at those who dared to differ from him. Bailey (1998:79) regards the strategy of sexually labelling dissenters (Ephesians 4,19; Galatians 5,19 and Romans 1,26-27), that is, practitioners of sexual taboos, as a lynchpin in the discourse on black people in the USA.13 African sexuality in South African society, especially in the years leading to constitutional apartheid, was used as a rhetorical instrument to instill fear in order to prepare the ground for separating racial groups. According to Alexander Butchart (1998:115) African sexuality, virility and sexual impulse were observed by the colonial power's psychological gaze as a relationship between the internal space of the African mind and the external space of the environment, creating what became known as the curse of the black peril. The black peril was defined as the consequence of removing Africans from their tribal environment and then failing to substitute this in the cities by an equivalent set of contextual restraints on African sexuality. An interdependence between African sexuality and the socio-cultural context was fabricated, with the effect that the African in the city was rendered normally abnormal. Through a combined system of segregation and social sanitation, the abnormality was sought to be ameliorated. One should perhaps not be surprised at the five black editors' submission before the HRC inquiry into racism in the media, that all too often in order to recognise racism, one should be African and black and still bear all the humiliation of the past in mind (cf. Naudé 2000). Butchart portrays how Western socio-medical science perceived the African body. Whenever such a body entered the surgery or was examined by socio-medical personnel, in other words, submitted to the socio-medical "gaze", the African body was not "discovered", but fabricated. This "gaze" (Butchart 1998:17) was not merely a perceptual or cognitive skill cultivated in medical training. It was an active construction of how things appeared to medicine as well as to the techniques by which medicine made things appear in order to arrive at a particular knowledge of the body. The gaze reflected a temporal specificity that produced the doctor and, in turn, the human body as its object (Butchart 1998:18). For example, when a refreshment station was established at the Cape in 1652, glimpses of the first European "gaze" on the African body constituted that body in a language of the senses: The voice heard by the ear, the body scanned by the eye and the smell of fat applied to the African skin (cf. Butchart 1998:55). However, it was not a body comprising volume, that is, internal organs. The African body was only a body comprising of a surface. Later, the body extended from being a merely random collection of external organs to a body whose external organs formed a relationship with one another. However, the colonial gaze was still the exertion of sovereign power (cf. Butchart 1998:58). It did not focus on the individual, but simply used the African body to display physical power of the monarch. With the advent of the medical missionary in the mid 19th century, the body without volume received an interior anatomy. But the doctor was still exercising sovereign power by displaying his power over the body on the operating table, albeit to heal and not to punish (Butchart 1998:80). The doctor created a spectacle that addressed the onlookers in whose beliefs and deeds were reproduced the forces of darkness that had to be made to bow to 'civilization'. But, adds Butchart (1998:81), running alongside was the beginning of disciplinary power symbolised by the doctor and his instruments and the body of the patient. In as much as the missionary doctors acted against what they perceived as evil and misery (thereby destroying African traditions), they nevertheless caused the African body to become the target of discipline as opposed to the brute force of sovereign power (cf. Butchart 1998:90). With the discovery of gold and the subsequent need for miners, the disciplinary gaze of the African body developed. An economy of human bodies (migrant labour) came into being that required an approach that could transform the collective of African bodies into a systematized domain of knowledge about how disease, deviance and normality circulated (Butchart 1998:94). At the beginning it was still a gaze that fabricated racially distinct African bodies, tracing their social networks and the cultural practices illuminated by the path of disease (Butchart 1998:98). Gradually the gaze became more focussed on the individual miner and his contact with European culture that eroded traditional values and practices that would have lessened the risks of infection, had they been left intact. The systematic uprooting of the African body from its traditional moorings and the close intermingling of the African body with the European body enabled the psychological gaze to produce the notion of the black peril (Butchart 1998:114) in the guise of the Carnegie Commission of 1932. That commission drove the psychological sciences deep into the interstices between black and white bodies, in order to invest these spaces with the dividing power of discipline: 'Spread through the minutest points of contact between African and European (the kitchen, the nursery, the road gang, the factory and the mine shaft), these were established as an analysable network of body boundaries and breached spaces between black and white minds. This objectified the African as source of corruption and the European as a victim, whose Protestant ethic was undermined by psychological proximity to the coarse and careless African.' Added to the African mentality was a quantitative surveillance device that could hierarchise the population against the norm of intelligence quotient. The average intelligence of the African was perceived as equivalent to mentally defective whites (Butchart 1998:117). Thus, the biological truth of European sovereignty could be established. Simultaneously, a new language of government that could manage racial distinctions and cultivate a culture of difference came into being. If one understands how a gaze can fabricate a body and how a political force can formulate a policy to enact its own fabrication, the ethical question of responsibility is raised. It is not a mere question of exercising the right to fabricate on account of being the major political force, or a case of correcting historical imbalances, but a question of how to constitute the face of the Other without reducing the Other to nothingness. Levinas' notion of ethics and responsibility towards the Other may be of some help.
The Other has face. It is not a face hidden behind the anonymity of race or gender. In Ethics and Infinity (1985:83ff - his most accessible text) Levinas argues that one meets the face of the Other in its utter nakedness and destituteness. The face is exposed, menaced, as if inviting one to an act of violence, yet simultaneously, forbidding one to kill. According to Levinas, the first word of the face is "Thou shallt not kill", because the Other is perceived as a stranger in the world of the self, a foreigner in one's country, someone completely out of place. It is a person essentially without familial ties, like a widow or an orphan vulnerable and alone in the world. In the gender/racial panopticon, the inmate is viewed as belonging to a group under observation. They are perceived as having certain similar features. Are these features ontologically determined, i.e. inherent to the group, or are they constructions in the minds of the observers? From Levinas' point of view, knowledge of other persons is not ontological, but rooted in ethics. The ideas one has about other people are not representations of something outside of one's being. It is not a discovery one makes, but rather in invention of the mind, because, as Beavers 14 (1990) puts it,
Levinas calls this violence "totalisation": It is a denial of the other's difference and the otherness of the other. In the gender/racial panopticon such totalisation occurs whenever the other is limited to a set of rational categories, be they racial, sexual, or otherwise. Whenever someone knows what the other is about before the other has spoken, that which is essentially "other" is reduced to someone else's consciousness. The other is reduced to "sameness" (Levinas 1985:91).15 However, the reduction to sameness, or the non-recognition of autonomy constitutes exactly the accusation levelled at the media: The lack of individuation in the news affirms a racist tendency in newspapers read and owned by white people. Beavers (1993) says the following about the media in the USA:
But maybe the accusation does not so much concern racism than anonymity bestowed on reports about people in a global society where a faceless populace is controlled by an equally faceless media. Similarly, the problem underlying the debate about the role of women in a church like the RCSA is that the women are being defaced by an equally faceless synod. According to presbyteral church law, once the Synod is dissolved, nothing exists and the dominees and elders disappear behind the lines of a faceless membership. It is easy for a meeting consisting only of men to make decisions about women when they are not obliged to look them in the eye. In Theron's advertisement the facelessness is acute: as a media product everyone is able to see here face, but she was looking into the lens of the camera and never saw they eyes of her audience.16 It is obvious that regarding the complaints about racism in the media and the report on racism in the media, we are dealing with an "Other" that is reduced to something the Other refuses to be reduced to. We are dealing with a self that is essentially alone in the world, that leads an independent existence and wishes not to become part of a greater totality: like the Other, it is a widow or an orphan. Although the self and the Other are alone in the world, both preserved as independent and self-sufficient17 (Levinas 1981:27), each can only exist because of the other one. Levinas' problem consists in constructing a relation between the two allowing both to retain their independence, for when one constructs a relation, the nature of the relation is such that the moment the Other is brought into the sphere of the self, the self reduces or deletes the otherness of the Other (cf. Davis 1996:41). The self would want to enjoy the Other, but cannot because the Other resists the self's consumption (cf. Davis 1996:43). It is in the sphere of this tension created by the possibility of becoming absorbed in each other, and the paradox of a relation where each should retain its separateness, that Levinas suggests the ethical moment. It is not a doctrine of moral norms or principles, but a radical obligation which infuses every act of critical thinking (Phillips and Fewell 1997:4):
The encounter, or rather, the mere possibility of an encounter with the presence of the Other questions the independence or separateness of the Other. In the face of the Other the self experiences a vulnerability (because the Other can hurt you) and a proximity (defined by Levinas (1981:85) as "[s]ignifyingness, the-one-for-the-other, exposedness of self to another, it is immediacy in caresses and in the contact of saying"). This experience demands a response. Levinas understands this response as a responsibility for the Other: "a responsibility for what is not my deed, or for what does not even matter to me; or which precisely does matter to me, is met by me as a face" (1985:95). Meeting the face is not a perception of the face, but an indication of the presence of the infinite that cannot be reduced to a representation. In this proximity, says Levinas (1985:96), the self is responsible for the Other without even having taken on responsibilities in his or her regard: The responsibilities of the Other is incumbent on the self. It is a responsibility for the Other where the self is responsible for the responsibility of the Other. Responsibility is the tie with the Other. But Levinas is only concerned with the self in the face of the Other. The responsibility of the Other towards the self is his or her own affair. Responsibility is not a reciprocal undertaking (1985:99). Responsibility implies an imperative force by the Other to put oneself in his or her place, not to appropriate one's own objectivity, but to answer the need of the Other, to supply for his or her want with one's own substance. In other words, to give sustenance to the Other (Lingis 1981: xxii). Levinas calls it substitution: to be for the other person. Being in the place of an Other means to be in the place of an other as a hostage for the Other (cf. Levinas 1981:127). The self is defined by the Other and to kill the Other would destroy the very origin of the self's responsibility.
Responsibility in an African context On 23rd March 2000 the CNN African Journalist of the year awards were given out.18 The Free Press-Africa award went to Sorious Samura of Sierra-Leone, who faced the guns of his own country in his quest to record the civil war. In his speech, as reported by Dube (2000a:4), he said that Africa is a continent of both the bad and the good, the ugly and the beautiful. However, the story he is forced to tell, is that which says Africa is all doom. But he admits that the ugly seems to rear its head more frequently in Africa. After all, his documentary is not about singing children, but about children drugged to kill and rape their mothers. How is one to conceive of Levinas' notion of responsibility in Africa, when a war continues to ravage the African continent? Levinas' notion of responsibility for the Other reminds one of "Ubuntu" and the phrase "Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu", meaning a person is a person because of other people, or more simply, I am because you are. It looks as if both Levinas and the notion of Ubuntu embrace humanism and as if both assume respect, or rather, treatment with dignity and empathy.19 Levinas' ethics or responsibility for the Other is not "out there", but, like Ubuntu, exists the moment the face of the Other appears. This face is not a real presence, but merely a proximity. The proximity of the face commands a responsibility for the Other. Similarly, Ubuntu seems to cause people to act in a way they intuitively know to be right. It is not something they choose (Boon 1996:33). Joe Teffo of the Department of Philosophy at the University of the North (1997:106) defines Ubuntu as one of those modalities of the spirit pertaining to human beings which manifests a people's humanness, understanding and existential peace. Teffo's thinking on Ubuntu is, to my mind, the nearest one can get to comparing Levinas' concept of the Other, thanks to another French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre. In an earlier essay, Teffo (1996:101) uses the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre to elucidate the problem of the mind of the Other within the context of African philosophy. According to him, the other is seen not as the Other, but as an other with certain inherent racial limitations. In very broad terms, Teffo argues that in Sartre's mode of being in the world there are the "they-group" and the "us-group". The they- group treats the us-group as instruments to achieve their goal within a context of master and slave. In the South-African context, this modality has certain consequences. For Teffo two different modes of being in the world were impressed on society: a "they" and an "us" experience, which he respectively labels being-white-in-the-world and being-black-in-the-world. Whilst he argues that the latter mode is to experience oneself as a problem, a non-being in the eyes of the non-black, the SAHRC's inquiry certainly succeeded in rendering the continued presence of the vestiges of the Western culture as being-white-in-a-world-of-blacks problematical. Teffo contends that the black consciousness philosophy can be instrumental in overcoming the dichotomy of being-black-in-the-world and being-white-in-the-world in order to enable the emergence of the new colourless person.20 He regards the body as the bearer and medium through which the totality of human experience can be articulated in order to underline the wholeness of human life. In fact, he argues (1996:103) that wholeness is the hallmark of an African perspective on life in its totality. This wholeness is his link to Ubuntu: "Humankind is a communal being, and s/he cannot be conceived apart from his/her relationship with others." (1996:103). Ubuntu is therefore a unique interdependence of persons for the exercise, development and fulfilment of their powers. A person is not defined by a set of properties or features, but by the relationships existing between him/her and others. It is this idea of a person defined by his or her relation to an other that opens new possibilities for the African concept. Although my reception of Levinas into an African concept of Ubuntu is at this stage very preliminary and naive realistic, it seems to me valid to assert that both define the human being in terms of a relation rather than in terms of an ontology. Nonetheless, they are not the same, because they are manifested in two different cultures. I suspect that Levinas' idea of the Other is very open: The Other can be everyone. Although the Other has a face, that face is rather vague because the self does not look the face in the eye, since that would mean that the Other became consumed in the gaze of the self. Teffo is influenced by Sartre and Levinas follows a route somewhat different to that of Sartre.21 However, Teffo seems to widen the scope of Ubuntu. Traditionally, Ubuntu is limited to the tribe or clan that constitutes the corporate identity of the individual (cf. Teffo 1996:103):
The line is described in terms of ancestors and descendants as if this is the sphere in which Ubuntu takes place. The Other is essentially an other in a hereditary line. What happens when someone from outside this line of ancestors and descendants enters into the community? In underpinning the problem of racism, Teffo argues that Ubuntu reaches beyond the mere clan or tribe. In fact, in very harsh words he (1996:103) maintains the following:
Sugirtharajah (1998:94) states that the imperialiser and the imperialised are inevitably locked together. The focus on gender and racism is part of the re-examination and re-assessment of Western values. We are in a process of renewed perception, in a changed location regarding power. But it should go beyond what Sugirtharajah (1998:94) refers to as essentialist and contrastive thinking. The categories of "us" (African culture) and "they" (Western culture) or women versus men perpetuate the killer gaze of the past. We are reminded that we indeed fabricate each other in our meeting of one another. The question is how we proceed in our fabrication. Levinas reminds us of the ethical moment in the meeting of the face of the Other. And Africa provides that prospective common meeting ground. It is possible that the West and Africa are probably not that far removed from each other. The body is an interpretive category, but not in the sense that behaviour and thoughts can be linked to a specific gender or racial category. Gender and race are social constructs with which a person tries to make sense of the presence of the body when meeting that body as a face. Levinas' idea of responsibility for the Other (without demanding reciprocity) suggests that our gaze dare not be all-consuming. The Other is not our prisoner, and will always try to avert or frustrate the gaze out of fear of being reduced to nothingness by its absolute otherness. In our debate about gender inequality and racial discrimination we are reminded that our gaze of the Other in this regard can never be final. Meeting the Other means seeing the Other in its destituteness, exposed and menaced, yet simultaneously realising one's own limits and freedom. And our relation to the biblical text? The text is an Other which demands not to be reduced to our sameness. It is, after all, an ancient text that needs to be read against its ancient contexts. And when we, as scholars or ministers, interpret this ancient text for others, those Others retain their absolute otherness. They cannot be reduced to obey the whims of ancient patriarchal society.
Notes 1. Gerald West refers here to a remark made by Knut Holter of Stavanger, Norway at a conference on reconciliation and restitution at Stellenbosch in September 1996. (back) 2. Naim Ateek (1992:131) is of the opinion that Palestinian Christians are penalized by Western Christians because they have accepted the Messiahship of Jesus. But for Christian Arabs, Palestine is their homeland (1992:140). They had no part in the anti-Semitism in Europe, yet they feel they are paying the price for European atrocities (Ateek 1992:146). (back) 3. This is the case with the King James Version where Matthew 5:38-39 in particular makes Jesus authorise monarchical absolutism (cf. Wink 1991). (back) 4. In the early days of the church, the formation of the Jesus movement proved quite disruptive within Judaism. It disturbed family bonds, so that brothers, sisters and parents did not want to sit with the member of their family that had become a member of the new sect. In some cases it meant that the livelihood of a family was endangered. A similar situation is described in the Didache and the introduction to the life of a Cynic. The Cynic, so it appears, must be of a specific character: he must lay aside all anger and be rock-like in the face of insults. His is a life of exploitation and humiliation. (back) 5. Gerd Theissen (1992:130-156) situates the Matthew text in the aftermath of the Jewish War (after 70 CE) when the Jews were struggling with the Roman military force. Milavec's proposal (1995) makes more sense when he argues that the consequences envisioned by the text of Matthew are too mild for the aftermath of the Jewish war. In the case of death threatening events, the inclination would be to flee rather than to resist. (back) 6. Butchart (1998:30) draws the following comparison between sovereign and disciplinary power: Where sovereignty exerts control through violence and restraint, discipline does so through surveillance alone. Where sovereign power requires the visibility of itself, the unseen force of discipline makes visible the individual as object, effect and target of power. Where sovereign power emanates from a central point, disciplinary power is relational and distributed into each body and every gap between bodies. Where sovereign power is sporadically eclipsed and restored, discipline functions constantly and automatically through recruitment of the individual and the social as its relays. Where sovereign power destroys and conceals beneath its weight, disciplinary power creates and illuminates its points of articulation in the objects, effects and knowledge it sustains. (back) 7. Beeld reported (cf. Jackson 2000a: 12) that the churches did not see their way open to regard 1 Timothy 2:11-13 as a discourse determined by time (tydsgebonde). Paul's beliefs that women should refrain from speaking during worship, open up themselves for learning and not be allowed to exercise power over men, are still valid (cf. Potgieter 2000:10). Although it was said that women would not be allowed to the offices within the church, the Synod decided to do more research regarding the role of women in the church. It seems that the question was: Now that the door has been closed to women who wish to become elders, deacons or ministers, what should their role be in a male dominated church (cf. Jackson 2000c:9 and 2000d:13)? It was requested that women serve on this commission. For a discussion on the public debate about the position of women in the RCSA prior to the Synod's decision, see Snyman 1999. (back) 8. In a previous article I (Snyman 1999) argued that regarding the Bible as prescriptive in its entirety is equal to embracing violence as biblically prescribed. I argued (1999:392) that once the pattern of a holy text has been established and bathed in divine authority, it only takes a small step towards killing and subjugating other people as Israel once did. I think the same is happening regarding women in the RCSA. When the subjugation of women and their relegation to marginal figures takes place in the Bible, is it morally correct to do likewise in the 21st century? Although the RCSA synod may argue they have "biblical proof", it does not mean that the ideologies and ethics of ancient Israel and the early Christian church embedded in the biblical texts, are suitable to life in a society far removed in time, culture and place. (back) 9. Although many other things happened at the synod (cf. Vergeer 2000:6), the scope the daily newspaper Beeld gave to the problem of gender inequality in religious structures illustrates the importance prominent societal instruments attach to the problem of discrimination. The significance of Beeld's reporter (cf. Jackson 2000d) addressing the issue of how to change a synod decision, cannot be ignored. In a male-dominated structure knowledge of how to change a decision is not that easy to find, because that knowledge is guarded by the men to whom women would have to turn if they wanted to know how to change things. (back) 10. In the March edition of the women's magazine of the RCSA, Die Gereformeerde Vroueblad, the editor, Mariana Venter (2000), published a rather subversive answer to the continuing exclusion of women in the power structures of the RCSA. As editor, she demands not to be left out in the decision making process and activates the women to have their voices heard. (back) 11. The focus here would be on Braude's report because her findings and presuppositions have had a significant impact on the public debate. (back) 12. It would be an understatement to say that Braude's report was well received within some parts of the media. Mike Robertson (1999), editor of the Sunday Times, described the report as "a staggeringly inept hodgepodge of confused thinking, pseudoscience, half-truths (sic), distortions of facts, and, in some instances, wholesale departures from reality". The brouhaha overshadowed an accompanying report by the Media Monitoring Project which challenges the media's harmful portrayal of both black and white people. Moreover, Robertson sees in the MMP a redemption in that it recognises the difficulties of defining and identifying subliminal racism. Max du Preez (2000:20), a vociferous anti-apartheid voice in the eighties, argued that the HRC has shot itself in the foot by issuing summonses to the editors in order to ensure their participation in what he described as a witch-hunt and the most embarrassing faux pas since 1994. Barrell (2000) argues that the outcome of the debate about racism in the South African media will depend on who becomes master of the word "racism". In his submission to the HRC he argues that if the HRC follows a definition where only white people are racists, the HRC will be bound to conclude that the SA media is racist to the extent that it has white members of staff. Then there need not be any obligation to show that an act or utterance by a white member of the media was racist in intention or result, because as with the doctrine of original sin, it is already present. There is only one conclusion: racists are sending out racist messages which are received as racist messages. (back) 13. Bailey says: "We have been the victims of the use of sexual innuendo. We have been described as being more sexually endowed and active than whites. We have been described as having more voracious sexual appetites than they, and because of this, we have been described as 'animal like'." (back) 14. I owe my current understanding of Levinas' ideas to Beavers (1990 & 1995). Levinas' work is incredibly difficult, especially his book Otherwise than being or beyond essence (1981). Davis (1996:70) argues that many features of Levinas' textual practice seem calculated to disorientate the reader. "To put it plainly, the difficulty of Levinas' prose is not simply a product of the philosophical complexity of what he has to say. Meaning is endangered by a practice of writing that eludes ready comprehension." (Davis 1996:73). And "The difficulty of the work and the problems of understanding that it poses are not tangential to the point; they are the point. Interrogating Levinas' text becomes a process of self-interrogation, as local problems of understanding confront the reader with more fundamental questions: 'What does Levinas mean by responsibility?' slips into 'What is my responsibility, how am I responsible for my neighbour?' The reader makes the text, and in the process makes herself." (Davis 1996:91). Similarly, my understanding of Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish (1977) is directed by Armstrong's interpretation (1985 & 1987) as well as Butchart (1998) who relies on Armstrong's representation. At this stage, my own reception of both French authors are quite naive and very superficial. Postmodernism necessitates a disclosure of the contexts which has a bearing on my thinking. Moreover, it also urges me to pin down my ideas and not to wait until I have digested the entire spectrum of ideas about Levinas and Foucault. My impression is that within a modernist paradigm I would not have been able to say anything unless I were totally sure and absolutely certain about my "facts". (back) 15. One can argue that Braude drew her conclusions after the media as the Other had spoken. However, the "media" does not consists of a singular individual. Although Braude came to an understanding after she has read newspapers and listened to the radio, she never intended to look at the individuals who produced the media articles or broadcasts. In fact, it would have been impossible. Her endeavour to link newspaper reports and photos to authorial intent fails, because it is not possible to read someone's mind on the basis of a text alone. (back) 16. The question arises whether the media would be able to individuate at all. We are dealing with an audience whose extent enables the existence of the media. Were the audience small, the media as we know it would not be able to exist. (back) 17. The self has its own economy. It lives from the world (Levinas 1981:112) that is fully available to the self and ready to meet the needs of the self and fulfil its desires. Levinas calls this "enjoyment" (1981:113): It is a process by which the self makes itself at home in a world where otherness is not a threat to be overcome, but a pleasure to be experienced (1981:119). (back) 18. According reporter Pamela Dube (2000b:3), the awards ceremony enabled African journalists to come of age and to take their rightful place in a world obsessed with all that is Western. The awards symbolise the wish of Africa to tell her own story, over against the West's distortion of the African story. Dube's evaluation represents a stream of though that only an African can have an understanding of what Africa is all about. In other words, understanding and knowing the Other are closely linked to one's presence in a context. It is a presence not simply of being there, because then anyone would do. No, it is a presence with a particular ontology: birth, citizenship, and race. Of Jaques Pauw, who won the African Journalist of the year award with Brian Hungwe of Zimbabwe, Dube says: "[B]ut being well-resourced does not mean the West has an understanding of what Africa is all about." Pauw - whom in terms of the Braude report would be labelled a white supremacist because of his face - argued that, being Africans, he and his team were cultured enough to understand the intricacies of a civil war on the continent. The problem Dube had with him, was his admission that he had resources and facilities which his fellow Africans did not have. (back) 19. Broodryk (1996:36) argues that "Ubuntuism" is not that unique when compared to certain ideologies: "If 'unique' means unusual, incomparable or extra-ordinary, Ubuntuism then seems not to be unique. Ubuntu does not exist only in one culture; people of all cultures and races can have 'this magic gift or sadly lack it. In each of us some of these qualities exist.'" Currently, Ubuntu appears to be South Africa's quest to dignify African culture, especially in management and business circles (cf. Lascaris & Lipkin 1993:45-47). Makhudu (1993:41) argues, however, that although other cultures have philosophical concepts similar to Ubuntu, no other culture approaches the all-pervasive aspect of Ubuntu as a living process of co-operation of humanhood. Louw (1998) argues that Ubuntu describes human being as "being-with-others" as well as what "being-with-others" should be all about. He sees Ubuntu as a a distinctly African rationale for relating to others. (back) 20. Kritzinger (1999:23) echoes the same wish. He regards race as a way to describe social reality. He says that the elevation of biological differences between people into matters of anthropological significance lies at the heart of perpetuating racism. To him, the terms "white" and "black" describe significant patterns of privilege and disadvantage. He says: "I would agree with Robert Sobukwe and others that if we are to use the term 'race' at all, we should use it to refer to the human race as a whole." Kritzinger (1999:24) aims at going beyond white and black to an inclusive African identity or a set of open and flexible African identities in which there is a free cultural interchange. (back) 21. Sartre argued that the fundamental nature of human relations was conflict and Levinas argued that the face to face encounter is more or less pacific, because the revelation of the face is essentially non-violent (cf. Davis 1996:48). I think Sartre's focus on conflict gave Teffo the impetus for his assertiveness of being-black-in-the -world. (back)
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