Dr. Christabel Aba Sam and Dr. Christine Vogt-William on Masculine Representations in Ghanaian Afrobeats and Literature
Media records
Abstract
- Abstract
- Dr. Christabel Aba Sam is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana and currently a Cluster fellow at the University of Bayreuth. In this episode of the Cluster Conversation, she talks with her host Dr. Christine Vogt-William (Director of the Cluster of Excellence’s Gender and Diversity Office) about her work on images of masculinities in Ghanaian Afrobeats and how they reveal certain social politics of contemporary Ghanaian society.
People & roles
Origins & context
- Title
- Dr. Christabel Aba Sam and Dr. Christine Vogt-William on Masculine Representations in Ghanaian Afrobeats and Literature
- Language
- English
- Podcast series
-
Cluster Conversations
- Date
- December 20, 2024
Rights & access
- Extent
- 59 minutes, 56 seconds
Identifiers & sources
Further details
- Episode number
- 28
Full text
- Transcript
-
Speaker 1: Cluster Conversations, a podcast by Africa Multiple.
Speaker 1: Okay, well then welcome to the latest episode of the Cluster Conversations. I am Christine Folk Williams, the director of the Gender and Diversity Office, and I'm very, very pleased to welcome my visiting fellow Doctor Christabel Aba Sam from University of Cape Coast, Ghana. And she's been here with us at the cluster in Bayreuth since the twenty second of October and will be accompanying our efforts at reconfiguring until roundabout the tenth of January, twenty twenty five. Yeah, so Christabel, do please sort of give us an idea of who you are as a scholar and as a citizen, as a subject, how you came to African studies and yeah, a little bit about your interest in the cluster itself.
Speaker 2: Okay. Thank you very much. And thank you for the modest introduction. I am Christabel like you've already intimated and I am a member of the Department of English, University of Cape Coast back in Ghana. Currently I am a senior lecturer and I am particularly interested in literary studies, literary representations. My master's degree focused on literary representations of women in African women's writings and coming onto the PhD program, I thought that I could shift still within the area of gender, but this time trying to focus on men and how men are also presented in novels. It is popular saying in the African context that the man is typically hegemonic. And so I thought that it would be interesting to see whether there are variant of the African man as depicted in the context of the African novel. And interestingly, I came on to look at how such presentations or such mutations of African masculinities can be read as a possible intimation of African future so that going forward, we can think about progressive masculinities within the African context. Coming to the African Multiple Cluster, a senior colleague of mine, I don't know if it's okay to mention his name, Professor Grant, who has been affiliated with the University of Lagos some time back invited me to his office and said that, I think that the cluster will be a good place to be because it offers young career scholars opportunity to experiment and to build connections and also to improve in terms of academic growth. So I would like you to try. So I did try and thankfully I got to be offered a place as a fellow in the African Multiple Cluster in University of Lagos, Nigeria. I went there, I sent a proposal again, I wanted to expand on my PhD thesis, continue to look at the representations of men. Then I was informed that here at the cluster, you can't stay in your room and read a novel and come and make a presentation. I need to go to the field and then get a taste of what it tastes like to be a man outside of the novel, how it feels to be a man in the society. So thinking through, the last stop was to go to the seashore. So I went to the seashore, I interacted with the fishermen and I got a sense that in their line of duty, there are a lot of things that they say as by way of singing. So you realize that when you go to the seashore and have fishermen at work, they sing along pulling their nets and that song is supposed to be a motivation for them so that they do not get tired in dragging their net. But beyond that, you could see some kind of politicking going on in terms of the lyrics of the song. So I got interested in the songs and I imposed some framework on it and it was really interesting and the results were wonderful, amazing. So the director there also said that
Speaker 1: This focus is good. It seems novel. So you should see the ways in which you can modify it and not only suit it to the Lagos context, but how you can have an interaction between what is happening in Lagos and what is happening in Ghana, so that you can have a sense of Africa. So that if you focus on Lagos, then you can have a restricted sense of what you're calling Africa. But when you open up the discussion to a focus on other geopolitical zones, then you can have a better sense of the Africa that you're talking about. So I had to incorporate Ghana, Nigeria, and the dialogue was very interesting. Coming to Bairoit, I initially wanted to work on fashion and masculinities. During the COVID era, the President of Republic of Ghana, His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, used to deliver regular speeches to the citizens trying to update them on government interventions and what government has done to curb the situation as it were. It was interesting to notice that anytime he stood to deliver a speech, there was a link between the fabric type. You know, back in Ghana fabrics have names. So for example, this one that I am wearing, you can talk about maybe mother is gold or good wives are hard to come by or great men are expensive. You know, they have names. So you realise that there was a connection between the subject of the speech and the attire that he was wearing. So I thought that over time fashion was something that was in the female domain. But for a hegemonic figure, as it were, a man in a political space, as it were, to utilise the medium of fashion to communicate to the citizenry, I thought that it was very interesting to look at that discourse going on.
Speaker 2: So fashion was basically politicised by this political masculine figure, right? You've already addressed quite a stretch of concerns that are sort of pertinent to the field of literary and cultural studies. Can you just in your capacity as a literary and cultural studies scholar, just sort of share with us a couple of ideas on how literary and cultural studies approaches can instil a certain excitement as regards exploring new facets of African studies?
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. I think that literature is life. And literature itself is a reflection of what is in the society. And so in literary studies, we mostly talk about the idea of reflection and refraction. So in reflection, literature is trying to depict what is actually going on in the society. And in the context of refraction, it is trying to, as it were, propose solutions to curb some of the issues that are not sitting well with humanity. So if we pay attention to what happens in the novel, you would come very close to what is happening in the society. And therefore when you come into contact with aberrations or deviations or some things that are counter expectations to what the society loves to see, then the refraction setting, how then does the novelist propose solutions, you know, to treat the matter, to offer a certain divergent perspective to the issues. So by doing this, there is some dynamism brought into the culture of a group of people. You know, so every literary writer has a certain base with where he or she is coming from. So if you're reading Achebe, you should expect that there should be something Igbo culture being represented. If you're reading Amma Darko, Ghanaian heroine, you should be expected that something Ghanaian Akon culture will be exhibited. And you will also find in this exhibition her own commentary on how certain cultural practices can be reviewed or can be, you know, as it were, used for certain positive doings.
Speaker 2: I'm also interested in the sort of potentials of research into literary and cultural studies as regards the clusters sort of agenda towards reconfiguring African studies. How, you know, research and teaching...
Speaker 1: can be rethought and revisioned in an African studies that is viable for the twenty-first century. I mean, there's quite a, you know, reverberation of a decolonial sensibility here. And then you get, you know, resonances with Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Decolonising the Mind from nineteen eighty-six, for example, where he very, very cogently points out how colonial histories in African countries have had their influences on how literature is produced and how it is also received in African context. So when you say that the novel transports social concerns in African societies and in the example that you gave of your own engagement with contexts in Lagos and with Ghana and how you brought those two contexts into conversation, what types of social concerns do you see in diverse African cultural contexts that merit rethinking using the genre of the novel, for example?
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking about some of the things that you've already listed. I mean, when you talk about looking in your PhD work at women's concerns as set out in the novel, right? And here I am also assuming that you're looking at the genre of the African novel written in English. So it's a particularly anglophone context that you're referencing here. And now in your postdoc research, you have basically elected to look at African masculinities, where you then see certain variations of African masculinity which merit engagement with through literature, right? Also again, with a view to seeing what types of future visions can be sort of set up for African contexts. So what might some of these social concerns be, for example, using the examples that you have seen in your PhD work when you say women's concerns and now in your postdoc work when you say men's concerns? I see this as a very, very, you know, sort of nuanced and in very many ways complex engagement with the field of African gender studies, which as we know comprises not just women's studies and feminist studies. We also look at African masculinities studies, where African men, African boys are the focal point of how they understand themselves as gendered subjects and as citizens and how they relate to other gendered subjects and citizens. So if you could just sort of share some of the concerns, the social concerns that you have encountered in your work in the PhD and in the postdoc phases of research.
Speaker 2: Alright, thank you so much. Starting from the point of reconfiguring African studies, I think that basically what has been going on in my private estimation is there is a lot of talking back, you know, so there is a lot of blame game, particularly focusing on the imperial process of colonialism. Even though it is important that colonialism remains central in our discussions because we cannot disconnect from that process, but it is also important that we pay attention to how we can advance into the future, which is why the mention of Ngugi wa Thiong'o was quite important for me because in Decolonising the Mind, he talks about...
Speaker 1: uh most importantly trying to uh write novels in our own language, you know, so that we cannot talk about decolonization when we are still operating within the Western framework. But that is something to continuously engage with because I find, for example, Achebe's proposal quite interesting and great because it says that if you're writing to the world and you're not writing for yourself and you you you're inviting people to uh listen to what you have to say, then you need to communicate in a language that is readily available to your audience. And so for you to talk in Gikuyu, for example, which is what uh Ngugi does most of the time and then follows up with the translation, there is some admission of the global, you know. So so indeed whilst we engage in the talking back, we need to also engage with the realities of globalization and how we can fit in as scholars all over the world. And I think that we can't also do away with this global influence because if you come to talk about my current project that I'm looking at, masculine representations again in Ghanaian Afrobeat, the analysis is revealing some very, very interesting stuff. So for example, you see the influences coming from all over, particularly within the cyberspace of America, how Ghanaian masculinities get to be shaped by that context. So you find musicians playing on movie franchise, particularly within the American domain, action movies and you are asking yourself, how then can you call typical Ghanaian masculinities without looking at all of these influences coming to play in that. So for example, if you come to Ghana, there is a popular slang, we call it jack. So if you meet a man on the way, you call him jack. And that idea has been developed following from Commando, an American movie, 1985 American movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger again, this time not Terminator but Commando. And and and Commando is now like the, if you like, the hero, you know, the last man standing, the man that kills all the antagonists and has the last word for the day. So young men, you know, call this commando in Ghanaian popular slang, jack. So anytime you met anybody on the, you know, street of Ghana and he says jack, then there is a replay of that idea of Commando and how it influences masculine performance on a daily basis. So in reconfiguring African studies, I think that whilst we engage with the colonial, we need to properly engage with the postcolonial and the decolonial, not forgetting the global influences at play in all of that.
Speaker 2: When when you bring in the space of the US and the access to the space of the US as part of these global influences on on Ghanaian masculinities of of you know of a certain type, how do you then address the relevance of the Ghanaian diaspora in the US in sort of also complexifying these perceptions of masculinity that as you point out have been evoked and taken from the 1980s US films with the titles of Commando and Terminator, right? And again, the titles as I as I also observed during your ICDL lecture, they are very highly militarized. They are evocative of a militarized masculinity taken and represented as represented from these films. And you know usually it's it's a white US-American masculine protagonist that is being sort of imaged through these films. So so how how do how does number one, the militarized masculinity working in the context of the film Commando as evoked through the term jack and on the one hand, but at the same time, what about Ghanaian diasporic...
Speaker 1: masculinities. Also sort of, do they, are they existing side by side or do they also cross over in the reception of these films? How how do continental Ghanaian men pick up on these complexities?
Speaker 2: Okay, thank you. If if if you look at GH diasporic masculinities for example, so within the Ghanaian context, if you traveled outside of Ghana and lived overseas and you came back, there is the idea of the boga. Okay. Yeah. What we can talk in literary terms as the Bintu. And the Bintu is expected to have a certain kind of complexity in terms of character behavior, in terms of relating to others. You know, so this boga is actually affected in speech. So so so there is a there is a bedding, there is a cultural bedding to to to you know ascribe to a certain masculine identity that is first of all unique, different from what Rattley may call the traditional man, unique from the traditional man. And this one is a highly complex figure because he is a combination of Western values and traditional Ghanaian values. So it ties in with Akosua's idea of the big man. So you need to present a certain image which is sophisticated. Yeah. So it is in this sophistication that we can read the GH diasporic masculinities. Even though I am yet to engage properly with GH diasporic masculinities in my presentation or in my research, I think that I am getting hints and all of these hints are coming from movie space, starting with even cartoons. So in the last analysis that I did, I am just seeing the idea of the superman. And this superman is also once again derived from these cartoonists but complicated by what Nietzsche does in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. So there are a lot of complications. So the idea of the GH masculinities is quite sophisticated and we need to properly, you know, unpack the influences that goes into that.
Speaker 1: Um, I'd just like to come back to the genre that you're looking at because earlier when when we were talking about the the sort of resonances for literary and cultural studies in African studies, you specified that the novel is a specific genre that was, you know, pertinent in this context of looking at Ghanaian masculinities. I noticed however that you are looking at the musical genre of Afro beats. And here we would basically look at the music itself, the use of lyrics. Is there some sort of evocation of poetry in the lyrics? And also the performance, the actual Ghanaian artist, whether he's from the continent or whether he's from the diaspora or whether she's from the diaspora or whether she's from the continent, how they perform in line with Afrobeat conventions. So how do you how do you sort of look at this particular musical genre of Afro beats as relating to literary and cultural studies as a productive site for future visions of masculine citizenship, feminine citizenship in the Ghanaian context?
Speaker 2: So Afrobeat is a combination of several varieties of music. So we have the typical Ghanaian highlife, which is uniquely Ghanaian highlife. Then we have the boga highlife, we have the dancehall, we have hip hop and soul and all of those ones. If you pay attention to the literature on Ghanaian Afrobeat, it has mainly focused on highlife, which is like I've said earlier, uniquely Ghanaian because of...
Speaker 1: language and the cultural habits that are in there. Little attention has been paid to other varieties of music like the dancehall, the afropop and all of those ones. But that is of currency these days because of the age of the performers. And these performers are becoming, we call them celebrities, right? So they are becoming models for younger generations. So we find that their performance both in action and in the song text is crucial. So that when the song is out there, what kind of influence will the song have on the audience, the younger generation listening to this song? And those are the marketing, you know, the younger generation constitutes the larger part of the patronage in terms of afrobeats. So such presentations are very important for us as literary scholars to see in terms of the poetry and the performance and how the images that are depicted can have some kind of social and political consequences on the younger generations. So like I hinted earlier, if you come to Ghana, there are popular musicians that the young generation find connections with, like Shatta Wale, whom I have selected to use in my very loud, very controversial. And if you pay attention to his songs, now, I just read yesterday that he is the most awarded African artiste. Not just Ghana, most awarded. So it means that the productions, his productions are an important site for engagement because you would find that he would have lots of following. And this following will buy into the convictions that he shares through the medium of his songs. So if you go to his songs, then you'll find what communication is he putting across? How is he trying to teach ideal ways of performing masculinities? How is he trying to suggest or place injunctions on the younger generations as regards the ways in which they perform their masculinity? And this is crucial for contemporary Ghanaian masculine citizenship so that over time, we do not have to be producing toxic performances that would have dire consequences for us as a people. So I thought that it is interesting to look at the language choices and the images that he sets to communicate and then critically analyse those ones to tease out the images or what he thinks are ideal for ideal masculine performances within the Ghanaian context.
Speaker 2: Can you just give a couple of examples of some of the of these toxic performances that are being addressed, the toxic performance of masculinity, as you pointed out, that basically generates certain types of social problems, right? And as you pointed out, the artist has his own political convictions sort of colouring his composing of the song text and the types of imageries that he likes to mobilize and also the way he performs it. I mean, if it's a masculine artist and of course he would also be doing two levels of performance, one on the musical level and one on the actual gender performativity level. So in your opinion then, what kinds of toxic performances of masculinities or toxic experiences of masculinities are being thematized in this artist's work, for example?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think that the first one he deals with has to do with fuckboys. Okay. Yeah. And I found that quite interesting and how he actually tries to take a backstage as an artist and as a performer, trying to exonerate himself from the idea of fuckboys. So in a song titled Save Her Heart, he talks about how a woman has resigned herself to trading her body because she has had failure, you know, several failures as regard her love affair. So she has now come to resign herself to trading in her body. So she doesn't want anything affection. Every relationship that she has to enter into should be purely transactional. And he goes on to mention...
Speaker 1: very established musicians. And suggest that all of these men will break the ladies' hearts because they are fuckboys.
Speaker 2: Okay, so they're there purely for sexual relationships?
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: There's no emotional investment?
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So talking about a certain transactional idea, you know, that men within that context have a lot of transactional ideas. So in terms of relationship, the man is thinking about what he stands to gain from you as a woman, not actually coming into the relationship for some kind of complementarity or for some kind of, you know, trying to better your life as a partner, but he is first of all looking at what he stands to gain as an individual and so present a certain deceptive image so that the woman, the victim, falls prey to this man. So the idea of relationships governed by transaction, and it's not just in everyday boyfriend girlfriend relationship, but even in the context of marriage, the idea of transaction operates. So he is questioning the idea of fuckboys, you know, so that it is everywhere, not just in the in the younger generation, but even with the adult generation, that idea of transaction does not allow for the proper, if you like, the culturally established notion of relations. So that in terms of relation, there should be some kind of you gain, I gain, but not a one-sided thing. And then in this idea of fuckboys beyond the idea of transaction, there is also the sexual aggression of men. So that the man is interested in the body of the woman, so he is going at it no matter the technique, the style that he needs to use, what he has to do at the end of the day is to get the woman. So the woman's body is actually very crucial in this idea of transaction. So it is the goal. And the man sees the body as a target to get it. And so every deceptive mechanism that he has to adopt to get to that one is very crucial. So these are some of the toxic ideas that he tries to send across in his idea of fuckboys.
Speaker 2: Okay. So here, what is also the main goal of this transactional sexual relationship is to possess the woman's body as part of his range of possessions. It's an objectification of the woman's body without any recognition of her own desires and her own right to desire as a subject.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 2: Right. Okay. Can you just sort of share your thoughts on the question of culturally established and accepted sort of values in relationships in Ghanaian context? What are these established values that people aspire to?
Speaker 1: So within the Ghanaian context, I think that even though Ghana is not a Christian country, has not been officially declared a Christian country, I think that the majority of Ghanaians are Christians. And so relationships are influenced by religious perceptions. And in the religious context, you are expected to be each other's keeper. So that idea of belonging is there. But this is to the contrary as this musician tries to put across. And he does so again with this idea of great men. So that in Ghana, when you're talking about someone who is a great man, then someone that is rising to heroism. Yeah. So everybody wants to be a great man. Everybody wants to be seen as a great man. And so in aspiring to be a great man...
Speaker 1: There is a dubious attempt to skip the organic process that leads to heroism. So, uh, in aspiring to heroism, there are rules, if you like, not as in documented rules. They are expectations that you need to follow before you can be recognised as this great man. And if I should use the example of Kwame Nkrumah, our first president as an example, then you find in the idea of a great man, a certain selfless person who is trying to, as it were, put himself on the line for the good of others. That is generally the idea of a great man using Kwame Nkrumah's example. But these days, in modern times, you find that people want to be seen as great. And yet the component of selflessness and yet the good of others is absent. But there is this individualistic focus that has come to frame the idea of great men. So it is no longer for us to benefit from my suffering, but I am doing this for myself actually. And that has serious implications because if you read the politics in Ghana currently, you will find in the normal, the ordinary politician, this complexity of individualistic, of selfishness. And Naa Tetteh, twenty fifteen, has done a study on that and says that if you pay attention to the idea of great men and politicians in Ghana, you can find three images. And I am not too sure about that, but I remember one which he talks about the self, you know, the focus on the self. So there is a certain, you know, charade as I am doing this for the good of the nation, I am doing this for my community. But beneath it is I am doing it for myself so that I can rise to fame, so that I can be counted amongst the people within the elite or political or well-to-do circles, so that I can benefit for myself. So there is a lot of engagement going on in terms of how he tries to, you know, bring out the toxic representations that has gone to frame performances, masculine performances in Ghana. And I find that very interesting because particularly within the political domain, it is now becoming very difficult to comment about such issues unless you're attacked as belonging to the other side of the political divide. So the conversation is quite muted along those lines. So I like it when he is trying to bring up the issue for critical engagement.
Speaker 2: Right, right. Um, do you see this this great man model of selflessness in some ways also coexisting alongside the big man model that Akosua Ampofo also references? Because this idea of the big man is also something that's invested in a certain hegemonic and patriarchal model, right? Where again, the public persona is set above others because of a certain access to certain types of power. And even certain types of power that are bordering on the illegal even, right? Where the the question of legality and illegality is also sometimes sort of rendered blurred if one is in this big man persona, right? So so do you see a type of parallel coexisting of both these masculinity models which are both hegemonic masculinity models or do you see them also being able to, shall we say, flourish independent of each other?
Speaker 1: No, I don't think so. I think that within the idea of big man...
Speaker 1: Within the idea of big man, you can have a sense of great men. But within the idea of the great man, we cannot have the idea of the big man because of money. So, the idea of big man has something to do with having money, luxury, you know, a taste for the exotic. Yeah. So that would be typically for the big man. But in the great man, like Madiba, is a great man. So Madiba cannot be described as a big man, but a great man because the focus is not on the taste for exotic, but the focus is on the selflessness to redeem. Yep. So, so for me, the distinction has to do with the taste for the exotic and the other one has to do with the focus of selflessness and the redemptive mission of the great man.
Speaker 2: Okay. Right. This is actually quite interesting. We could carry on talking for hours actually, because I would also like to hear a few more of your examples from the text corpus that you're looking at, which is a series of Ghanaian Afrobeat songs and performances. I'd like to just come to the question of your methodology of research, because I remember you said a little earlier on that while you were at that fellowship at the ACC Lagos, that one of the senior scholars basically told you that, you know, it's not just a matter of sitting around and reading novels or reading texts, but actually going to the field, as you said, how it feels to be a man outside the novel, or in your case perhaps how it feels to be a man outside the Afrobeat song or song tale, as you once put it, right? So, how do you sort of map out your methodology for your research for this particular project as well?
Speaker 1: So, it's interdisciplinary. So, I have bits of literary analysis, I have bits of linguistic analysis, and I have bit of musicology in terms of costuming, gestures and habits, screening, camera screening and all of the communication that derive from that. So, it is purely interdisciplinary. And there is the ethnographic sense that is not so pronounced because these songs operate within a certain cultural framework. So, if I am looking at the fishing songs, for example, what we sing in Cape Coast, that's where I'm coming from, is different from what is sang in Accra, where they speak Ga, you know. So, the cultural differences will play out. So, there is the ethnosense of the framework. So, when I go to the field, when I go to the site, and I first of all have to establish contact with the owners of the space, share with them my focus in the research and allow them to appreciate what I am doing and not for, if you like, financial gains, but to promote their wellbeing and also to draw attention to them in terms of policy making. And so, when I establish contact with them, then I get entry into their space. I go there to record whilst they are in session. So, for example, in Cape Coast, on Tuesdays, you don't go for fishing. Yeah. Because Tuesdays are sacred days. So, that is the custom there. So, when you go there on Tuesdays, you would not meet anybody there. So, when you establish contact with them, they would now tell you the days that they are available to fish, so that you can record them.
Speaker 1: In session, in performance, that way you get to see the cultural habits really manifesting itself. Then it can't be part of your analysis. So that analysis is not solely focused on the text, but the other parameters. Of the context itself, the space. Exactly. That comes into play. Right. Then I do that. Then I get to transcribe the songs from the source language into English. And then I need to verify with experts whether the translations are good. So in Lagos, for example, then I resort to a Yoruba speaker who is able to now translate the song from Yoruba to English. Then I would now get the translation and speak to another Yoruba speaker to vet the translations. So that in your interpretations, someone will say that this actually meant this, but you're saying it means this. So you get the inter-rater reliability test so that you can certify that the transcriptions and the translations are well done. Then you can move on to do the analysis. And then again, you need to impose a certain framework on your analysis so that it doesn't appear that you're making up the issues. So for example, in my present analysis, I, in Lagos, I looked at the issues of marginality. And then I looked at Lefebvre's idea of marginality. And currently I am looking at Kimberlé Crenshaw. And I am looking at Nietzsche. I am looking at Nietzsche's idea of the great man. And I'm looking at Crenshaw's idea of intersectionality. And finally, I am doing Braidotti in terms of posthumanism. So these ideas guide the interpretations that I make in the text.
Speaker 2: You said that you were using Nietzsche's idea of the great man. And you're talking about the humanism aspect which you're basically culling from Rosi Braidotti's work. I was just wondering if you saw also within the frame of Crenshaw's intersectional concerns as well where, you know, we have the intersecting of powerful discourses between race and gender and class and diverse other sociopolitical vectors. And I'm liking how you want to bring in the business of the great man versus the model of the African big man. And then you have the business of the posthumanism. I was wondering if you basically would also consider Sylvia Wynter's work where she looks at the idea of re-visioning and rethinking enlightenment discourses of the human. And where she actually looks at, or rather poses two models, Man One and Man Two, which are quite effective in also looking at how colonial cis heteropatriarchal structures also exert their power, right? And so I can see that, you know, your bringing together of these three theoretical trajectories might also, you know, fruitfully have a conversation with Sylvia Wynter's work as well because when she also engages with this and has posited the model of Man One and Man Two, she also brings in the question of how the concept of the human can be re-visioned, which was an enlightenment concept, but she takes a decolonial spin on it by actually looking at the coloniality of Man One and Man Two. So I'm seeing there are nice resonances there. So that might be an interesting trajectory for you to also go down that way. I'm so excited actually talking about your work with you because it's actually also quite rare to see somebody bring in a very, very, you know, in-your-face type of approach towards African masculinities studies. Can I just ask what are some of your own personal and political motivations in this? You've already mentioned your epistemic investments, but what are your own as an African woman scholar of African gender studies specifically in a Ghanaian cultural sort of production like Ghanaian Afrobeat? What are some of your personal and political investments in this?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that...
Speaker 1: It's been a difficult choice to make actually because as a Christian and married to a cleric who is not so interested in what they call secular music. So Afrobeat and all of that constitute what they call secular music. So it's something if you like categorised as un-Christian. So to enter into that space there is lot of effort to be exerted in order to make a distinction between your personal beliefs and what pertains in the genre that you are engaged with. I think that I was talking about how I got myself involved in all of those gender masculinities things sometime in the ICDL which was unfortunately cut off by some other circumstance. So I have a father who is I don't know whether to describe him as patriarchal or traditional or hegemonic but I think a combination of the three. And who is creates a context in the household that is governed by a monologic voice. So it is always the voice of the father. And operating within this context it was quite challenging because growing up I had lots of choices. I had I had when I say choices I had lots of dreams rather to fulfill and I find that I have been redirected into certain areas which were you know primarily something not I had engineered to do right from the start. So gender studies and masculinities was actually not my thing. I began as someone who was very much interested in doing reading law. So and my father actually walked me to the capital and checked me into a hotel and encouraged me to do my best in the upcoming law exam. So he took me to the centre, I wrote my exam, did everything. He took me to see one or two established people who also gave me their word that they were going to make sure that my dream came to pass. Unfortunately one Sunday morning I was in church when I had a call from a colleague that the results from the exams were out and that I had not been picked. Oh dear. I was so sad. So I quickly left the premise and I went home and I met my father and he said to me that I didn't want you to pass. That's an interesting statement to make after all those yeah after the effort that he has put in to introduce me to all other persons and you know he said I didn't want you to pass because I have always dreamt that you would be teaching. Because my father is a teacher. Right. So he had couched you know he had a mapped out plan for me. And even though I don't have so much regret coming into this profession and doing what I am doing currently, I think and I feel that it would have been a lot more productive to have experimented with the things that I intended to do earlier before coming to do masculinity studies. And whilst I attempted you know join into the field of gender studies first of all I did something on feminisms for my MPhil. That's right. And I think that the approach was too radical and so my thesis didn't pass. I had to make some amendments in the argumentations that I had made before I could finally pass. So I decided that this time maybe I will have to be less radical and shift focus to pay attention to the category called the man and the complexities in the masculine performances that we have particularly within the Ghanaian context and if you like Africa. So
Speaker 1: Here I am. Well, you just mentioned a term which would probably generate an extra conversation and I don't know if we actually have time to go into that. The question of being radical and what is it about African feminist studies that might be considered radical. I mean, if we want to look at it from an intersectional point of view also, if you look at the question of blackness, you also basically have to look at the idea of the Black Radical Tradition as mobilized by Cedric Robinson, for example, which quite a few decolonial scholars also looks at. But the question is of course how do we consider all these intersectional complexities in the figure of the man, the African man, as such, which is often set up as a model for African citizenship and the sort of generator of so-called African values. And of course then that brings us to the question of what kinds of African values are being espoused through cultural productions like Ghanaian Afro beats as performed by African men artists even as African women artists because we, I think agree in the field of gender studies at least that masculinities and femininities are always going to be in relation with each other. So yeah, I mean thank you so much for setting out the complexities of your field of work. This has been highly enriching for me to engage with you and I think before we sort of close, I just want to sort of give you some space to talk a little bit about what you have encountered here in the space of Bairoit in the purview of African Studies here with the cluster, what your experience till now has been of the cluster. You have a very brief fellowship period, but what has this time here given you as such?
Speaker 2: Yeah okay, so I'll make it very brief. I think that I have enjoyed the Academy lunch meetings because you have opportunity to listen to others and to know what they are into and to also, if you like, see the cultural resonances. So because in the Academy lunch currently we have Cameroon, we have Nigeria, we have South Africa and anytime that a scholar stands up to present something, then you can readily feel a certain sense of connection with what is happening, even though there is a certain divergent, there are some dynamics to it, you feel that this pertains in my area but in this specific way. So it opens up lot of ideas for you as a scholar that you can explore going forward. So I think it's very helpful. And also with the Knowledge Lab where there's lot more flexibility in terms of the engagement and a wider audience. You get to see different people bringing on board, asking questions from their very own fields and trying to see how their background can feed into what you're doing. I think that is really helpful and no wonder it's called a knowledge lab so that you are able to regenerate some new knowledge from that experience. So it's been interesting and helpful.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm so glad that that's been a productive space for you as well. I think at this point then I'd just like to thank you for taking the time to sort of share your academic journey with this particular context of the Visiting Fellow Programme with the Cluster and also sharing some exciting insights in your own field of African Studies which is focused on African masculinity studies, a very, very rich and promising field. Thank you so much. And I'd also like to thank our audience for listening and I hope that this conversation has opened up more nodes of engagement and have rendered you curious and more adventurous in possible encounters with the field of African gender studies as an intrinsic part of the transdisciplinary field of African Studies. With this, I wish everybody a happy holiday season. Do please take care of yourselves and be with your loved ones and be well and be safe. All the best.
[music]
Speaker 1: Hello everyone, thank you for joining us today. We're going to discuss the upcoming product launch and go through the key milestones.Value Annotations
Value Annotations
- Generated by
- Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct