Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-l4ctd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-18T08:50:13.647Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Disgust, Bodily Aesthetics and the Ethic of Being Human in Botswana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2011

Julie Livingston
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article explores how people in Botswana approach and navigate their own feelings of disgust and morbid curiosity towards the aesthetically impaired bodies of their fellow citizens, and the problems and opportunities these feelings present in a context where a particular humanistic ethos of respect and manners, botho, is stressed in the public discourse of nationalism. The agenda of contemporary disability and patients' rights movements is based on the assertion that moral sentiment is neither determined nor subverted by particular bodily states or configurations. While such activism acknowledges and affirms experiences of debility and physical suffering, the political agenda largely centres on enabling persons to participate equally in rational-critical discourse in the public sphere regardless of the vagaries of any individual's particular bodily state. Within this framework, physicality should have no power to structure relationships among citizens. And yet, in Botswana, as in other places, the messiness of the human body – manifested in diarrhoea, drool, disfigurement, and disgust – threatens to subvert humanistic efforts, and challenges the smooth enactment of rights-based politics and other liberal projects. In what follows I explore the sometimes troubling physicality of humanistic and affective life in Botswana to better grasp the messy bodily dimensions of sociality that are so often swept under the rug in discussions of citizenship, rights and community. Aesthetic efforts at bathing, bandaging and otherwise reworking the bodies in question reveal dimensions of sociality and aspects of sensory and affective interaction that are critical to the enactment of moral sentiment.

Cet article examine la manière dont les Botswanais abordent et traitent leurs sentiments de dégoût et de curiosité morbide à l'égard des corps de leurs concitoyens présentant des défauts esthétiques, et les problèmes et opportunités que présentent ces sentiments dans un contexte où une culture humaniste particulière du respect et des mœurs, botho, est mise en exergue dans le discours public du nationalisme. Les objectifs des mouvements contemporains de défense des droits des patients et des handicapés reposent sur le principe que le sentiment moral n'est pas déterminé ni ébranlé par des états ou configurations particulières du corps. Alors que cet activisme reconnaît et affirme les expériences de débilité et de souffrance physique, le projet politique s'attache largement à donner les moyens de participer sur un pied d'égalité au discours rationnel critique dans la sphère publique, quels que soient les aléas de l'état physique de la personne. Dans ce cadre, la physicalité ne devrait pas avoir le pouvoir de structurer les relations entre les citoyens. Pourtant, au Botswana comme ailleurs, l'impureté du corps humain (manifestée dans la diarrhée, la bave, le défigurement et le dégoût) menace de déstabiliser les efforts humanistes et remet en cause l'adoption sans heurts de politiques basées sur les droits et autres projets libéraux. L'article examine ensuite la physicalité parfois troublante de la vie humaniste et affective au Botswana pour mieux appréhender les dimensions corporelles impures de la socialité si souvent escamotées dans les discussions sur la citoyenneté, les droits et la communauté. Les efforts esthétiques de lavage, de bandage ou de refaçonnage des corps en question révèlent des dimensions de socialité et des aspects d'interaction sensorielle et affective indispensables à l'interprétation du sentiment moral.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 78 , Issue 2 , May 2008 , pp. 288 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

‘Adherence to national principle of “Botho” can help in the fight against AIDS’. Botswana Daily News 28 March 2000.Google Scholar
Ahmed, S. (2004) ‘Affective economies’, Social Text 22 (279): 117–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alverson, H. (1978) Mind in the Heart of Darkness: value and self-identity among the Tswana of Southern Africa. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, W. (1995) ‘Excremental colonialism: public health and the poetics of pollution’, Critical Inquiry 21 (3): 640–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashforth, A. (2004) Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bongomba, E. (2004) ‘Reflections on Thabo Mbeki's African Renaissance’, Journal of Southern African Studies 30 (2): 291–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burke, T. (1996) Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: commodification, consumption, and cleanliness in modern Zimbabwe. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Chapman, R. (2002) ‘Endangering safe motherhood in Mozambique: prenatal care as pregnancy risk’, Social Science and Medicine 57 (2): 355–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. L. (1997) Of Revelation and Revolution: the dialectics of modernity on a South African frontier (vol. II). Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Durham, D. (2002) ‘Love and jealousy in the space of death’, Ethnos 67 (2): 155–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Durham, D. (2005) ‘Did you bathe this morning? Baths and morality in Botswana’ in Masquelier, A. (ed.), Dirt, Undress, and Difference: critical perspectives on the body's surface. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Durham, D. and Klaits, F. (2002) ‘Funerals and the public space of sentiment in Botswana’, Journal of Southern African Studies 28 (4): 777–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fabian, J. (2000) Out of Our Minds: reason and madness in the exploration of Central Africa. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilman, S. (2000) Making the Body Beautiful: a cultural history of aesthetic surgery. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Klaits, F. (2002) ‘Care and Kinship in an Apostolic Church during Botswana's Time of AIDS’. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University.Google Scholar
Klaits, F. (2005) ‘The widow in blue: blood and the morality of remembering in Botswana's time of AIDS’, Africa 75 (1): 46–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lamb, S. (2000) White Saris and Sweet Mangoes: aging, gender, and the body in North India. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lambek, M. and Solway, J. (2002) ‘Just anger: scenarios of indignation in Botswana and Madagascar’, Ethnos 66: 49–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Livingston, J. (2005) Debility and the Moral Imagination in Botswana. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Masquelier, A. (2005) ‘Introduction’ in Masquelier, A. (ed.), Dirt, Undress and Difference: critical perspectives on the body's surface. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
McClintock, A. (1995) Imperial Leather: race, gender, and sexuality in the colonial contest. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Miller, W. (1997) The Anatomy of Disgust. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mogae, F. G. (2003) ‘His Excellency Mr Festus Gontebanye Mogae, President of the Republic of Botswana, Independence Day message to the nation, 29 September 2003’, (http://www.botswanaembassy.org/092903_1.html.), accessed 12 July 2006.Google Scholar
Niehaus, I. (2001) Witchcraft, Power and Politics: exploring the occult in the South African Lowveld. Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, M. (2004) Hiding from Humanity: disgust, shame, and the law. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Nyamnjoh, F. (2006) Insiders and Outsiders: citizenship and xenophobia in contemporary southern Africa. London: Zed Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Republic of Botswana (2000) ‘Vision 2016’. (www.gov.bw/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=79), accessed 6 April 2007.Google Scholar
Reynolds, P. (2005) ‘Imfobe: self-knowledge and the reach for ethics among former, young, anti-apartheid activists’, Anthropology Southern Africa 28 (3 and 4): 62–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samatar, A. (1999) An African Miracle: state and class leadership and colonial legacy in Botswana development. Portsmouth NH: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Thomson, R. (1997) Extraordinary Bodies: figuring physical disability in American culture and literature. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Werbner, R. (2004) Reasonable Radicals and Citizenship in Botswana: the public anthropology of Kalanga elites. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar