Women's Bodies

An extraordinary event is about to take place in London, Buenos Aires and other cities across the planet – an international summit on how our bodies are shaped and controlled by outside influences - the media, the dietmongers, the passion for makeovers in the entertainment industry, the arts, increasing use of plastic surgery by celebrities, the fashion industry – the list is endless.
Presumably inspired by the song by Dianne Reeves the summit is called "Endangered Species". It has been initiated by former colleagues of mine – Susie Orbach and Luise Eichenbaum - who started The Women’s Therapy Centre in London and the Women’s Therapy Centre Institute in New York City in the late 70’s and early 80’s.

 

New Brooms

At the end of last year Njabulo Ndebele wrote about shake-ups in the ANC in an article in the Mail & Guardian entitled “Toxic politics: diary of a bad year.” He asked how successful societies replicate their success over time? His answer is that, “They provide opportunities for their citizens for seamless cross-generational interactions within the network of private and public institutions that give definition to national effort.” 
  This hasn't been a feature of recent South African political life: “Consider the sudden and unplanned departure of then-president Thabo Mbeki, when the ANC threw away in an instant years of institutional knowledge. It was more than an individual who left. A body of knowledge and experience did too, regardless of how they may have been understood.” As a result he continues, “younger members of the ANC have little access to an aspect of their organisation’s contemporary history.” He believes, “A deep chasm has emerged in the interactive space between one generation and another, which will take years to rebuild.”

This reminded me of an organization with which I am familiar and in which the staff turnover is high.

Assimilation in "The Finkler Question"

This very clever and often hilarious book written by Howard Jacobson won the Man Booker Prize in 2010. It takes a look at the different Jewish identities that exist in Britain today but particularly in intellectual North London. These identities are once again foregrounded and called into question in the wake of the Israeli attack on Gaza.
One of the themes in the book that interested me is that it takes a serious look at assimilationist tendencies in British liberal Jewry by turning assimilation on its head. We have the protagonist, a Gentile who wants to become a Jew. He feeds off what he perceives is the tragedy and suffering of the Jewish people and wants to acquire their knowingness of each other and to somehow make it in the Jewish world.

Much more common of-course, is the Jew who wants to pass in the Gentile world – who becomes a kind of chameleon, a Zelig (reminiscent of the film by Woody Allen).

Trauma Centre Reunion – October 2010

After I resigned from the Trauma Centre in May last year, I had the feeling that there was hardly anyone left working there to whom I needed or wanted to say goodbye. All the colleagues I’d been close to had already left years before. Perhaps many people who work in NGOs for more than a few years have had a similar experience?
Anyway, I decided I would construct my own farewell reunion. So finally in early October 2010 – after Eid and the Jewish holidays – 13 of us met on my patio for a Saturday lunch. A big coincidence/surprise was that Potiphar Nkhoma, who started working at the Trauma Centre pretty much at the same time as I did in 2001, just happened to be in the country from the USA and he turned up.

l.to r: Jackie Stewart, Siyabulela Mkabile, Potiphar Nkhoma, Emma Oliver, Kailas Kassan-Newton, Carmen Low-Shang, Haseena Parker, Robyn Rowe, Kerry Magnus. Seated: Lane Benjamin, Sarah Crawford-Browne, Margaret Green

I was sorry that some people who had been very important to me were unable to come – Dr Gordon Isaacs, who introduced me to trauma work (South African style) and supervised me for years, Maria Stacey, the first co-ordinator I had when I joined the Intake team and Eric Harper, who believed in me enough to hand over the work he was doing with Khulumani – an experience from which I learned so much. They had other commitments, as did Wanga Zembe, who was in Oxford ‘defending’ her Ph.D.

The Archie Mafeje Exhibition

In October 2010, I was involved in an exhibition which travelled to 3 South African universities and will eventually be housed at Walter Sisulu University.  It is an exhibition about Archie Mafeje as a young man. A history professor from UWC, Andrew Bank, in researching the work of South African women anthropologists, became interested in the collaborative relationship that UCT Professor Monica Wilson developed with her student and researcher, Archie Mafeje in the early 60’s. He first interviewed me about him sometime in early 2009. I had written a page about how I’d known Archie and what I valued about him for a special issue of CODESRIA Bulletin, issued after he died, entitled “A giant has moved on: Archie Mafeje (1936-2007)”, honoring his life and scholarship. It was as a result of what I wrote there that Andrew contacted me.

I probably first met Archie in 1958 in the company of other left-wing students.