Fenneke Reysoo spent two months (July-August, 2015) on an Andrew Mellon Foundation Senior Lecturership at Rhodes University, South-Africa.
Teaching
She taught a honour’s class on Gender, Culture and Power. Students were invited to engage with referential scholars who have theorised the concept of power (Weber, Bourdieu, Durkheim, Foucault…) from a critical feminist perspective. The red thread throughout the discussions was the following question: if "gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power" (J. Scott, 1986), how can we observe these relationships of power and how do they work? More specifically, how do the symbolic, institutional and social hierarchisations between men and women produce and reproduce discriminations, exclusions and marginalisations, and how are they legitimised? How do gendered hierarchies intersect with other systems of domination (race, class, age, sexual orientation)? Can we understand the underlying mechanisms of discrimination and exclusion when (dominant) cultural values (doxa) are taken for granted?
Through regular exercises students were asked to translate the abstract concepts of gender, culture and power into observable social interactions in everyday life. The critical engagement of the students from the South-African “free born generation” made this class a bi-weekly hub for passionate intellectual exchange where lived experiences were framed in order to “think” transformative actions.
Even though the students were initially very suspicious of “yet another bunch of Eurocentric white male scholars to read”, going back to the original readings and applying these theories to their own lives in today’s South-Africa turned out to be an insightful and highly appreciated exercise.
Participation in seminars
Fenneke Reysoo gave a presentation on "Chic, chèque, choc: Bodily Transactions and Love Strategies among Adolescents and Young Adults in Bamako, Mali" within the Friday seminar of the Department of Political and International Studies.
Dr. Reysoo presented a paper on problematising the global-local nexus through the prism of sexual-economic transactions (Paola Tabet, 1984) in Bamako, Mali. Demographic characteristics of Sub-Saharan societies nowadays show that almost half of the population is younger than 25 years old, that the average age at first marriage is increasing and that female involvement in primary and secondary education is on the rise. These trends lead to at least two interesting observations : 1) the timespan between sexual maturity and socially "authorized sexuality" (i.e. sexuality within wedlock) is extending and implies many opportunities for premarital sex ; 2) a life stage of adolescence with a specific youth culture and life projects is a very strong marker of social transformation. In a joint anthropological research on "Femininities and Masculinities on the Move" (2004-2006), Reysoo and her colleague Françoise Grange-Omokaro have shown how young girls deploy love strategies in order to access global commodities and to redistribute wealth from older rich men to younger deprived men. The metaphor "Chic, Chèque, Choc" in the title is borrowed from a rap song by Kaar Kass Sonn (Sexpéculation). Based on the research results, PGGC organised an international conference in 2007 and published the proceedings of this conference.
Fenneke Reysoo thanks Lihle, Nica, Kate, Julie, Lea, Qondikile and Tim for being such wonderful persons.