しばらく、ブログの更新を怠っていた。
いろいろと悪いニュースも良いニュースも入り乱れていて、まぁ単純に「元気です、ハッピーです」とは言えないのだけれども、まず来年2月にイギリスで行われる学会にアブストが通り、なおかつ文化人類学研究の財政支援を行う渋沢財団から、学会参加のための旅費の申請が認められたということは、良いことだろう。人類学ではないけれども、その学会(シンポジウム)には、ジェンダー研究の第一人者のジュディス・バトラーや、イギリスの文化研究のポール・ギルロイも参加するもので、いまからかなり緊張していたり。。。
あと、二三日中に、アブストを手直しして送りなおさないといけないのだが、指導教官とあいかわらず喧嘩している立場としては、助言を求める相手もおらず、途方に暮れていたり。この方向で、本当に書きすすめて大丈夫なのだろうか、と迷いながら、ようやく手をつけ始めている。
悪いニュースは、相変わらずのことなのだけれども、仕事先から契約終了を言い渡され、またフリーの身に戻ったということだろうか。でも、これはいいことなのかもしれない。経済的なこととはまた別に。
大切なことを、いまいちど確認するために、人は裸にならなければならない。裸とは言わずとも、持っているものを投げ捨てて、身を軽くする必要がある。自分にとって何が必要か、何が必要でないか、それを節目に勘定し、手に入れたいもののために、恥を振り捨て、自分の限界を試さなくてはならない。
冬が来る。寒い季節だが、この冷たい空気は身を引き締める。この月に、私は人生の節目を迎えることになる。すべてを失うかも知れない。すべてを失わずとも、何も得られないかもしれない。凶と出るか、吉と出るか、あと、一ヶ月の時間を私がどう過ごすかで、私の半生の方向は決まることだろう。
そして、まだ私は仕事が終わった後の眩暈と、所属先から漏れ出る指導教官との不協和音や、同僚たちによる不快な噂に身を打たれ、身体をふらつかせている。だから、いまは書くことだけが、自分にとっての羅針盤だ。
Can African Women Dance under the Name of “Citizenship”?:
Sexuality of Bar Girls in Development Discourse and through their Everyday-life Practices in Kampala, Uganda
**** *********
Ph. D Candidate
Graduate School of Social Sciences
********* University, Japan
This paper would like to examine a current “Orientalism” in the Third world development discourses, and the relationship between African women’s sexuality and “citizenship” through my ethnographic encounters with aid workers and bar-girls in Kampala, Uganda. The word of “citizenship” is dilemmatic not only for bar-girls, but also most of women in Uganda, because such a civil status is mostly obtained through their sexuality and marriage, except a very few case of their educational successes. In postcolonial context, the words of “African women” has some arbitrary senses because it has been taken as a battle stage between the “subjectivity” and the “subalternity”. I would like to, however, point out that this is just an academic proposition and dichotomy and rethink its arbitrariness, by seeing actual situations in Uganda.
When I was engaged in my research in Kampala, Uganda, I was informed that the number of malaya (in local term, means “prostitute” or “bar girls”) had been increased in Gulu, a central town in northern Uganda, where people were suffered by the long-term civil war of Lord Resistance Army. The cease-fire agreement in Juba in 2007 had brought a peace and many restructuring aid programmes, mainly organised by UN organisations and foreign NGOs, started at the beginning of 2008 in the north Uganda. In Gulu, an economic boom suddenly began under the name of development aid. According to my Ugandan friend, the main reason of increasing malaya was so obvious that aid (male) workers bought girls at night-clubs in Gulu. “Women dance with white guys because of money”.
It is sarcastic especially when we found the relationship between aid male workers and native girls in Uganda is rather Orientalist’s self-demand. Aid workers aim to be there for the empowerment of local people. The soldiers of the freedom have arrived and fought against poverty and old customs in Africa, but they need a moment of rest and take them through native women, as like most of US soldiers enjoyed women in Bangkok during the Vietnam War in 1970’s. Both wars were invented by the Western politics and both sexual demands would be satisfied by the Other of the West. This discourse automatically victimise the third world women in twice, to save and to buy them.
Once Spivak proposed a famous question on the Third world women’s subjectivity, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, and now I would like rather to ask this kind of question in another manner, “Can the African Women Dance?” This question has a sexual connotation in Ugandan context, due to the word “dance” (
oku-zina) implies the “make love” in local languages. To reach a citizenship, however, women are not just “be saved and bought” by dancing, although their actual options are confined. Dancing with guys is not a subaltern option, but performing their sexual manner with their (kind of) subjectivity. Their flirtation and temptation have always taken ambiguous stances. Consequently, the paper will clarify its ambiguity and difficulties of sexual agency by describing dancing scenes at night-club in Kampala as a cultural deep play.