Butchart's African Bodies: a review of The Anatomy of Power – European constructions of the African body. Published by the University of South Africa Press. Winner of the HiddinghCurrie award for Academic Excellence. By Pieter H. Coetzee The blurb on the back cover of Butchart's book alleges the following: ''Using Foucault's thinking on the relationship between power and knowledge, the author of this extraordinary book analyses the ways in which the body of 'The African' has itself been analysed in Western thought from the Renaissance to the present. Conventional analyses of colonialism view the body and society of the African as having predated European intervention the repressive practices of colonial occupation are seen as having disfigured a pre-existing known identity. Against this perspective, this book argues that socio-medical technologies were and are the creative underbelly of social control, actively inventing the African body, mind and society itself as objects amenable to analysis and domination". Butchart's socio-medical technologies are posited as an alternative to anthropological (mainly structuralist, Levi-Bruhl and Levi-Strauss) models of ''analysis and domination'' which were used extensively by Western (read European) ethnographers to construct a degenerate picture of the African mind (elaborated in terms of metaphors belonging to structuralist discourse such as 'primitive', 'emotional', 'unscientific', 'irrational', 'undeveloped', 'backward', and many others). Butchart claims that the socio-medical model in fact underpins the West's "disfigured" picture of Africa , and hence that the perspective on Africa on offer in his book is really the correct one. I take this to be the central claim of the book. Europe has been deeply cruel to Africa. Butchart captures much of Africa's distress in an idiom which purports to reinterpret the many manifestations of Europe's cruelty. One manifestation – the depiction of Africa and Africans as manifesting mere 'surface' without 'volume'has been the source of misleading monolithic representations of the continent and her cultures. To treat Africans as mere ''surface'' is to reduce them to objects of taxonomy in the way the structuralists did. A preoccupation with measurement, quantification and classification produces a body which in effect is merely a ''collection of overtly perceptible external organs – noses, teeth, hands, the skin, the hair, the feet, the genitalia, the breasts and so on'' (Butchart p. 55). Presented as 'subjects' consisting of separate and separable surface features the African body is not only an object of knowledge to curious Eurpeans but also a target of power. Here is a sample of structuralist inspired taxonomy dating from 1801. ''The person of a Hottentot while young is by no means void of symmetry. They are clean limbed, well proportioned, and erect. Their joints, hands, and feet are remarkably small. No protuberance of muscle to indicate strength; but a body delicately formed as that of a woman marks the inactive and effeminate mind of the Hottentot ...The colour of the eye is a deep chestnut: they are very long and narrow and removed to a great distance from each other; and the eyelids at the extremity next the nose, instead of forming an angle, as in Europeans, are rounded into each other exactly like those of the Chinese ...The cheekbones are high and prominent, and 2 with the narrow-pointed chin form nearly a triangle. Their teeth are beautifully white. The colour of the skin is that of a yellowish brown or faded leaf, but very different from the faded hue of a person in the jaundice, which it has been said to resemble. The hair is of a very singular nature: it does not cover the whole surface of the scalp, but grows in small tufts at certain distances from each other, and, when kept short, has the appearance and feel of a hard shoebrush, with this difference, that it is curled and twisted into small round lumps about the size of a marrowfat-pea'' (Butchart citing Barrow: 1801, p. 57). With this kind of ethnographic input, it is hardly surprising that on the rare occasions that the great minds of the West indicated the presence of ''volume'' in the African, they got it wrong: ''The race of the Negroes, one could say, is completely the opposite of the Americans; they are full of affect and passion, very lively, talkative and vain. They can be educated but only as servants (slaves), that is (if) they allow themselves to be trained. They have many motivating forces, are also sensitive, are afraid of blows and do much out of a sense of honour'' (Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view, p.264). The socio-medical technologies Butchart has in mind are in the relevant Foucaltian sense instruments of power which reduce subjects to objects of inquiry. Foucault recognises two meanings of the word 'subject': subject to someone else by control and dependence, and tied to his own identity by self-knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form of power which subjugates and makes subject to; they are forms of ''disciplinary'' power by which the African body is both manufactured (i.e. presented as a construct of the European mind) and also made manageable as an object of medical knowledge, the objective being their utilization in industry, particularly in mining. Butchart may be right about the necessity for a re-interpretation of history in terms of a Foucaultian framework, but Foucault's perspective fails to deliver the right ''volume''. The making of the subject – as patient and object of medical knowledge under the diagnostic procedures of the mining industry in South Africa – actually produces yet another victim – another target of power. Consider just what picture of the African body the socio-medical perspective yields. The Chamber of Mines (perhaps the greatest of all capitalist ventures in Africa hiring black labour) Archives listed certain bodily defects as reasons for rejecting individuals as labourers: ''weak chest'', ''flabby muscles and loose skin'', ''weight under 105 pounds, unless under five feet in height''. Because stationary bodies might conceal the relevant defects, the medical examination included a regimen of physical exercises. Here is a sample of a guideline for the examination procedure: ''Line up all the natives entirely stripped (they must not be allowed merely to drop their trousers and retain them about their ankles). Stand them in line about 20 feet away from the medical examiner. Make each boy walk towards the examiner, observing his gait and whether he is lame etc. When about five feet from the examiner cause him to rise on tip toe, then squat, then rise again, then extend both arms above his head, extend the arms at right angles to the body laterally, then forward, then flex the elbow joints. When in this position cause him to clench and open his hands, and then rotate each arm parallel to the long axis of the body. Turn him around and look at his spine ...(the instructions for the examination of other parts of the anatomy has been omitted here)... Ask the native a simple question in an ordinary voice to ascertain whether he is deaf. Look at his ears, his gums and teeth. Cover each eye separately, and ask him to count the fingers of your hand to test for blindness. Look at the skin, noting the presence of any large scars or varicose veins, or herniae, or flabbiness of muscles or skin. 3 Now examine heart and lungs (Butchart, p.101-102). Foucault, as one major representative of post-structuralism, is concerned with notions of power, specifically with how power makes the subject in this case the African body in the sense that it brings him under a specific distribution of power. The photographs of African manual workers included in the text demonstrates the distribution in question a powerless position for the worker in relation to an all-powerful work giver. The work giver is 'after' the worker's power, i.e. his physical power; the work for which he is being prepared is arduous and menial, and requires that he subject himself allow himself to be made a subject by a process of (medical) examination to determine his fitness (see the plate). In this examination the power of the work giver calls forth the (physical) power of the worker; the physically unfit (powerless) must be excluded. But this 'calling forth' dehumanizes the worker. They are naked, in public, and under Western eyes presenting images reminiscent of police identikits. They show no shame or discomfort at their humiliated condition, just as the suspects of a criminal investigation at an identity parade, stripped and lined up, attempt to salvage their self respect by not betraying their embarrassment. In the process of sanitation (selecting the fit and rejecting the unfit) a typography of types (racial, ethnic) emerges, one which reinforces the worst European prejudices: all brutes and brute force, all lacking individual identities (no names on the photographs, as in the family album or on your file under your photograph in the GP's consulting room). At least, that is how the socio-medical model presents them to our gaze they are not subjects, for under the socio-medical gaze they hold only physical power; they present a trunctuated image of human creatures turned into objects of exploitation. But now just how does this differ from the anthropological categories popularized by structuralists like Levi-Bruhl and Levi-Strauss? The great criticism against the structuralists has been that they leave no room for reconstruction.This has been a failure of method. Butchart's model, seeking to displace anthropological categories, itself fails to rise above the level of deconstruction, and, indeed, fails to show what is needed to make space for reconstruction: African bodies, constructed by Butchart's socio-medical model, have a reality an sich, qua objects, but no existence für sich, since they exist only für andere. To exist für sich would mean having a voice and the power to construct themselves in their own image. Worse still, the flattening of individuality under the socio-medical gaze displaces the viewer as subject in his familiar inter-subjective relation to another, as subject to subject (one being patient, the other viewer); the viewer – now turned voyeur – too is dehumanized because he ceases to be subject in so far as he escapes being relativized by his own subject position – a condition he can only experience in a dialogical, inter-subjective relation in which sich selbst is also Andere unto itself. To be in a non-relativized position is to have a self-proclaimed claim to centrality and even universality – the Andere unto itself as condition of intersubjectivity is strictly for others, i.e. the marginalized at the periphery of power. Such a non-relativized position is entirely artificial – a construct of theory appropriated by oppressors in the interests of oppression. The absence of ''volume'' which Butchart lamentably ascribes to structuralist preoccupation with measurement and classification is not corrected by viewing the matter through Foucault's prism. If ''volume'' is what he wants, then perhaps the patient centred approach in the psycho-analytic techniques in the work of the post-structuralist Lacan would be more appropriate to his intentions. Presumably Butchart is more interested in ideas of power than what Lacan allows as legitimate in his work. Hence (perhaps) his interest in Foucault. Be this as it may, Foucault is more appropriate if the intention is to come to grips with identity 4 constructions that proceed from (unequal) power relations, which, if correct, pushes the rationale for Butchart's analysis from a socio-medical perspective in a political direction. Interestingly enough, the idea of having a voice and the power to speak finds an echo in the greater picture of African-European interaction, in the spectre of a neo-colonial phobia, and anxieties about exploitation through racial typification (usually along essentialist lines). Paulin Hountondji has famously branded typifications of this kind "culturalism", and pointed to the contradiction contained in this term. The West creates a culturally monolithic Africa by flattening her internal diversity under a single gaze; yet it itself escapes being relativized by its own subject position . Sich selbst is never Andere unto itself no Andere unto itself to worry its selfproclaimed centrality. This is the famous Western gaze which negates an authentic self-constructed identity for Africa. Indeed, the Foucaultian perspective brought to bear on this identityconstruction context simply reinstates the parameters of Europe's Africa so reminiscent of the structuralists. This is a very un-poststructuralist but not entirely un-Faucaultian position to end up in. Butchart comments as follows: "What ...[the] critics... reveal in their preoccupation with the Foucaultian failure to provide any guidance for action 'is the assumption that there must be action and progress, a non-relativist way forward that has been defined by a Western tradition in the sciences of man'. They thus fail to recognize that the Foucaultian analysis formulates its questions and performs its studies from a plane of analysis independent of this liberal-Marxist perspective, a plane that because it is independent of any humanist assumptions is neither for nor against humanism" (Butchart p.184). I am not surprised that naked African males, stripped of dignity and identity end up as non-subjects, given Foucaultian indifference to humanist considerations, but surprised that this is an endpoint defended on post-structuralist grounds. Better to have followed Lacan, but better still, I think, to have adopted a perspective allowing for reconstructive endeavours, as post-colonial endeavours in Africa do. If there can be only a single non-relativized European centre, one might be disposed to overlook Butchart's retrospective application of Foucaultian post-structuralism to Renaissance Europe (for this remarkable feat see Butchart pp 34 ff.) and Colonial Africa. Perhaps postcolonial Africa, in her sense of awakening, has something in common with European awakening, in her sense, two centuries earlier. Whatever the truth on this score may be, Butchart's reading of Foucault, making possible such diverse applications, would suggest that either Foucaultian post-struturalism has not rid itself of the more objectionable trappings of structuralism (and my points above suggest that this might be the case), or Butchart reads Foucault in a certain self serving way. He says that his "strategy of assuming a 'true' reading of Foucault from which South African scholars have deviated must be read as a tactic of provocation rather than a claim to absolute cetainty in respect of its readings of misreadings of Foucault" (Butchart p.184). Well, as Butchart reads Foucault, Foucault's poststructuralism has universalist pretentions, or has not rid itself of such pretentions, in which case Foucault is closer to the structuralists than what he (Foucault) cares to admit. Methodologically this is disastorous because, if true, Butchart's analysis of discourses of exploitation, domination and identity construction is underpinned by over-arching, unifying theories of science and culture of the kind the structuralists have become famous for, the very fact in their methodological make-up which prevents them from undertaking reconstructive work. I submit that Butchart cannot have things both ways: he cannot have underpinning theory which both yields reconstructions of the past relevant for today (and this he must have since much of the book is written as if Foucault's poststructuralism allows for this), and have something to say from the given perspective that is meaningful for the people whose identity 5 constuction processes are under scrutiny. To have anything meaningful to say to these people, at least the possibility thereof, must proceed from a basis they are comfortable with and are willing to underwrite. Witness, in this regard, what the Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Gyekye says about basic principles of social organisation in Africa.The concept of humanism is at home in the context of a community whose primary bond is a shared understanding of the good for man. Gyekye asks what the source of cross-cultural misrecognition is, and explains as follows: "If one were to look for a pervasive and fundamental concept in African socio-ethical thought generally – a concept that animates other intellectual ties and forms of behaviour ... and provides continuity, resilience, nourishment and meaning to life – that concept would most probably be humanism: a philosophy that sees human needs, interests, and dignity as of fundamental importance and concern'' (Kwame Gyekye: Tradition and Modernity). This concept as understood in African socio-ethical thought is not at home in the Western liberal-individualist framework and is indeed incompatible with its ethos. Humanism thus understood is often read in ways Butchart labels "readings of misreadings", specifically to underline its (alleged) hostility to individualism. But consider the following. In African thought the dividing line between public and private is negotiable for individuals. What they treat as private is a matter open to choice. This accords with liberal views advanced by modern American philosophers like Iris Young who argues that the distinction between the private and the public domains need not be a social division each with different kinds of institutions, activities, and human attributes. The possibility, from within traditional communitarian settings in Africa of such rights to privacy means that agency (moral, psychological) is strongly effacious in two ways: for any agent, the efficacy of her agency in one sphere of social life cannot be diminished by her position in another sphere, and membership of the various spheres cannot be mutually exclusive; indeed, they are rather mutually supportive. Though a Foucaultian analysis of power-making-the-subject would have a place in this context, it would not be the most significant social and psychological phenomenon to investigate, for phenomena like reciprocity and mutuality have, in this context, a stronger claim to priority. And this is because they are in African socio-political thought conceptualized as forms of identification. About this Butchart and Foucault have nothing to say. In this context it is possible to raise questions about identity and difference without fear of collapsing the dialogue into binary oppositions of powerful and powerless, or to assimilate all difference to a single scale of power relations. In spite of its shortcomings Butchart's book is well worth reading. It is a wonderfully complex book. I recommend this book to students of intercultural studies, of history, psychology, anthropology, sociology and English. Pieter Coetzee