Loving disability



Walking to work this morning, I saw a young man with an older woman, running across the street hand in hand. There was a sense of urgency in crossing a busy, major road and a sense of joy too at their bodies, joined together to accomplish the task of getting from one place to another safely. It was one of those the biggest pleasures in life are contained in the small things or in this case, the little dangers safely traversed.

They walked in front of me. I watched them, the young man, his feet splayed as he walked unawaredly inelegantly enfolded  into the older woman: his mother, aunt, or caregiver perhaps. They were completely focused on each other, tender, present, joyful, and easy in their intimacy, easy in the closeness and the small (or large if a good life is a sequence of enough little pleasures) talk of the morning. It was beautiful to witness, the give and take, the mutual and reciprocal pleasure. It looked like a dance of intimacy and care so well-practiced that the steps are less important than the pleasures of dancing together.

So, why would I notice this, you may well ask. I was surprised by the mutuality, the reciprocity, not the intimacy in the encounter. I was surprised by how present the older woman was, her palpable pleasure in the young man. You may be raising your eyebrows here or should be. I've left out a salient point, the young man looked to be developmentally disabled; child-like in a body of a twenty-something year old.

I've been reading a fair amount of disability literature and the models of disability rarely mention this. The pleasure that is received by the caregivers. The focus, or at least the literature I have been reading, is usually focused on models of care, models of righting ruinous and stigmatising perception, models of integration, models that provide support and education for the families of the disabled. If parents write to capture the reality of parenting a disabled child, it is usually in fighting terms, no matter how dry or tender the discourse: my child is worth loving, why does society not see. If disabled people write their reality, there is this showing normalcy within abnormal conditions too. When parents or caregivers talk anecdotaly about someone who is disabled, they usually make explicit that the person is loving, as if this were in doubt. Something profound slips in these accounts.



The capacity to love, the what is received from the person who is deemed incapacitated. The need to defend or disavow what is already and unconsciously accorded to those we consider able-bodied. A similar kind of operation pertains for identity politics on race, gender, class. The imaginary where somehow reciprocity and mutuality become contained in stereotype, stigma and prejudice. The reduction of those intangible things that make life worth living, love flourish and bring all parties in intersubjective exchanges to a fullness of the human condition.



Undoubtedly there are stresses in caring for someone who is subjected to structural violences, requires more care in a world that splits our attentions and demands commodified responses, where value is accorded on unequal scales according to who is most human. In a world or societies rather that discipline us into regimes of value, what I witnessed this morning might have been a moment of mutual tender and intangible exchange that is not always constant for a  life enfolded by capitalism brings with it multiple pressures, and varying emotional, structural and psychological resources at any given time.



Pic sourced at http://www.idrs.org.au/



However, it made me pause and wonder, in which ways those who do not traverse life in ordinary, unmarked ways enable new capacities of caring, different modalities of attention, alternate requirements of engaing with the world. The older woman was fully present, and there was something joyous about it, something immediate about her attention and focus on the young man that made them both appear full. I wonder if this was a result of his 'disability', that its conditions generate presence and full engagement, a celebration of little victories like crossing a road successfully that might be all too fleeting, an acceptance of what is and a letting go of expectation, a mode of attention that is open and engaged, a tenderness and joy in the now.

I have heard people remark that their disabled child was a gift, and wondered at it, the need to say it. In a romantic view all children are gifts, that is if society were equal. Usually theses parents will say s/he is loving. I wonder now after this encounter if it is less about the child's very human capacity to love (although we know this is not always channelled well or reciprocated) or whether it is the disabled child teaching adults how to love in an unmediated way, beyond expectation, pausing after a harrowing day to bring their full attention home, bringing their capacity to care to the fore, opening them up to the moment; for there is no protection from the disabled child's need, no good reason to warrant the withdrawal of love, no good reason for distracted attention and probably bad interactional consequences too. In other words, does loving the disabled child give the adult a gift of the self, as most good loves do that, bring our highest self or most whole self into the world whereas anaemic loves tend to bring a defensive and thus fragmented self to the fore. I wonder how difficult it is to sustain or whether like toxic or resentful parental care it becomes a habit? I wonder why it's possible for some people or in some moments, like this morning and not others?

I have many, many questions and much food for thought. I'm just grateful to have witnessed this encounter today. Social scientists like to talk about the importance of contingency, this contingent moment's synchronicty is uncanny and necessary.

And then the lights went out ...

Saturday night in the Mother City, lining Somerset Road, a city out together, coming together in its disparate wholeness: people of all hues, shapes, classes, nationalities. The street was crowded, people were pushing against the barricades, rubbing up against each other, formally intimate, there was laughter, hisses and complaints of irritation, a palpable air of excitement, the restless stirring of a crowd awaiting promised entertainment and then ... the lights went out.

In a city where violence is rampant, albeit not in the cosmopolitan (read: largely white, affluent, the poor, usually black welcome to perform domestic labour, cook and clean up sumptous meals) streets of Green Point, this sent a murmur up the street. What is happening, people wanted to know as their eyes darted around to suddenly suspicious bystanders who were regarding them with reciprocal suspicion. The (sometimes forced) jollity of the evening was interrupted by whispers of 'its dangerous, things can happen, watch your bag, get closer.' In a city where electricity is the focus of riots by the poor, erudite complaints in national mouthpieces by the rich for power-cuts have become a normal interruption in everyday life, the-quiet-the-fear jokes started to flow: 'has the city not paid its electric, has Carnival in Cape Town tripped the electricity, is there a black out, how embarassing'.

And suddenly out of the dark, appeared a carnival act, clad only in miniscule knickers and body paint. I think the paint was spectacular, I couldn't see much, it was ... blacked out. It appears the city had paid its electricity for a short while later the lights came back on.  It seemed like a most carnivalesque act of censorship and has had me puzzled for days. If this was deliberate (and it seems it might not be as the lights were on in other parts of the street), it unveiled something interesting about censorship though. My apologies to those who did not get to experience and play with the paradoxes.



(sourced*)



It seemed like a clever compromise, between performing the risque and boundary-pushing, and a clumsy effort to protect the sensibilities of the public, to appease the conservative and yet ... kind of erotic too. After all sex that is hinted at, often is more alluring for tantalising the imagination, those painted people (mostly women I think) have been enhanced by the cloaking mystique of the dark. I saw them and yet feel like I missed something.

 The most clever acts of censorship are those that aren't brutish, where the lights have gone out and yet the parade goes on, the kind that gives a tantalising glimpse of the forbidden and yet circumvents a feasting of the eye and the act of censorship becomes part of the spectacle. And the tantalising glimpse of boundary-pushing is what we feasted on, whilst deregistering the surrounding darkness. We barely noticed when the lights went back on or noticed that we had been censored.

Most succesful acts of censorship do that, are contained in the event and become somewhat seamless, as if they weren't there in the first place. They play with already existing conditions or create them utilising the possibilities at hand. These miniscule acts of change, enacted within the confines of an unchanged disciplinary regime are meant to be the light in the dark, to hold one's attention while forgetting that your gaze has been trained and hemmed in by the dark. Some traditions do this too, where there is just enough room to do something different but not enough to fully claim the different space taken up and so the newness is respectably and conservatively cloaked in the darkness whilst we are allowed to applaud ourselves for being progressive.

(* Pic sourced http://www.capetown.travel/blog/entry/cape-town-carnival-2012-in-photos)

The power of vulnerability in researching love in positive psychology

Brene Brown's talk on "The power of vulnerability" on Ted.com (http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html) got me thinking about not just about what it means to be a good researcher but a few other things besides. About being a  good qualitative researcher of love and happiness within positive psychology to be more specific. A research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, Brown has spent the past ten years studying vulnerability, courage, authenticity and shame. In her talk she speaks of how we tend to numb ourselves to our research situations, to cover up our own feelings, acting as though we are emotionally 'sorted'.

But, if not sorted by concealement, by covering up in the so many ways we usually do, is there a better way to deal with vulnerability?

Very often researchers get caught up in a struggle between our true selves  - if you believe in an authentic self - and the ideal researchers we ought to be. I found a big part of myself in the talk. I found myself asking: How do I separate feelings about my own vulnerability from my actual work? Do I embrace it? How does that affect my work? I mean how does it affect my authenticity?

If you study people in the way that we do it is quite important that you master this whole emotion thing. And it is a whole lot of thing, trust me. Ultimately, the question is, how do you encourage people to reveal themselves to you if you yourself are not authentic or are trying to come across as 'sorted'and 'together'? But is there anyone who would want to work with a researcher who looks like she is falling apart! 

In our work and outside work we spend most of our time trying to come across as though our lives are intact. This is especially true for young and upcoming researchers who want to make an impression.

Now there is something about the concept of reflexivity that says that researchers need to understand the influence their presence will have on the research outcomes rather than try to avoid or eliminate it. Rightfully so, but what if a big part of who you are and your presence influences or interacts with the research environment in a way that completely alters what you could've found? What if that is just part of the whole process? I mean we do aim to influence people and decisions in one way or the other. So what if being vulnerable is part of the research: should whatever the outcomes are then be accepted for what they are? I don't think so.  But, finding ourselves doing research on love and happiness, we can't run away from the fact that we have been dumped about five times by previous lovers. We are also subjects in our own right. And so perhaps that squeaky voice of the inevitabity of vulnerability is what wants to come out in my research. How about we let it be and not be horribly questioned about my biased interpretations, subjectivity and reflexivity, because none of us is invulnerable from life messiness. Whether it is love or divorce, happiness or depression, it is all through my own subjetive 'eyes' right? And that is the beauty of qualitative research: we can all see the same subject from different points of view and still find a way to validate it. After all, there are many truths and I'm sure out there someone can relate to whatever interpretation I get to.

Who said psychologitsts and researchers don't have problems? We do. Like everyone else we have been dumped before, we have failed before, we have lost the one job that matters most before! So like anyone else, we as psychologists or researchers do have issues, of course. 

Did you notice that the example of being dumped comes up a lot? If you are nodding your head and going, mmhh, I too have wondered if this is not a big part of me coming out. 

Oh well, perhaps I'll just go ahead and do some research on being dumped.

But, wait, I forgot I am supposed to be going the positive psychology route. And it might not be so bad to be less negative about love or happiness. Instead of breakups and being dumped (see, that word again!) I will study love more appreciatively. And perhaps along the way I will find a way to ensure that I never get dumped again (again) and so 'take care of my fear, my vulnerability'. Is that possible, to protect oneself from being left, if one is to live fully? On the other hand, where is the fun in that - a researcher without a story to tell. Would you want to read their work? Sounds boring. Or maybe I'm just confused, and research might give me clarity!

Helen Fisher on Love on Ted

Last year we conducted our first study on love. I am surprised how long it took me to fully turn to love, given that much of my work is on sexuality. In any event, in 2011 we did a small study on love: "Coloured men in love" we called it.

This year we are doing another study on the subject. We have added another positive emotion: happiness. "Love and happiness in black men's lives" is what we are calling it. 

These two projects I am conducting with Candice Rule and Mandisa Malinga respectively, our 2011 and 2012 interns.

A third project we are undertaking in collaboration with colleagues at the University of the Western Cape, Dr Lindsay Clowes and Professor Tammy Shefer. We collected data with the help of students in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies and hope to start analysing the data soon. 

This is the context why Helen Fisher's talk on Ted (http://blog.ted.com/2006/09/06/helen_fisher_on/) is of interest. Helen Fisher is a biological anthropologist. Her books include "Why we love". In this wide-ranging talk, she outlines the bio-chemical foundations of love (and lust), and discusses the natural talents of women, and their new significance in the modern world. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 24:13).

Traditions of leadership

It is common in social science discourse to bring together beliefs, attitudes and behaviour as if it were a cohesive whole. It is also common for theorists of power to delink these three parts and look at the interstices between them, and how beliefs, attitudes and behaviours are brought to bear upon each other, to appertain the dynamic ways they reveal and conceal and enable the formation of relationships of power. Looking at what people do versus what they believe and say they are doing is important in understanding how ideology functions and how traditions are enacted. And of course, this has a bearing on inequitable relationships.

One needs only to look at traditions of leadership on the African continent, particularly by leaders who were at the forefront of liberatory struggles and the kinds of inequities they allow to flourish whilst mobilising talk about liberation. How the people, the actual real living people who their policies and practices fall down on are treated versus what leaders believe they are giving, to realise that these leaders are dazzled by their beliefs and their rhetoric. Their behaviours, the what is done in practice is soothed away by an attitude that justifies and of course, placates the restless populace. Its why the management of persona is important to despots, the paternalistic air, the distancing from actual details of the everyday, the gestures through talk of grand ideals that are not lived out by them, but of course should be lived out by the populace. The belief suffices and is treated as if it were behaviour. It is a peculiar kind of blindness, and all the more sad because the belief has so entrenched itself in the attitude, that the behaviour is not easily reflected on.

Sacrifice for the cause, it is worthy, tirelessly give your labouring body and relationships to the cause for it is worthy, occupy your hovels and your slums, for the cause requires it. And of course, the leader needs his respite from the hardness of the cause that the populace is fighting on his behalf, for how can he (and it is invariably a he) lead to glory if not supported, for he is the exception that will turn all the populace into exceptions, if only they worked hard enough. If they are disgruntled, it is because they have not worked hard enough, they are weak, angry, morally deficient, uncommitted and a whole host of other ills and the disease at the centre of the cause, is really their fault. And how can he the leader lead them to glory with so many among them that are deficient.

The cause becomes the spectacle and an explanation in and of itself, the ends of the cause is not meant for the populace for they are part of the cause. The ends have to be deferred by the populace, the expectation of fair treatment deferred for their is much work to be done elsewhere, the expectation not to be preyed on by the corrupt and bullies deferred for the world is not fair and there is work to be done, the expectation of the structures that support the work to be done deferred for there is much work to be done, and so it goes. And so corruption thrives, and small cruelties and the explanation is that it is so difficult to change a deficient system and therefore we must work harder at the cause. It is the disbelieving individuals who are at fault and rarely that a concerted practicing ethic of care, accountability and responsibility is absent from the leader. After all institutions and political systems are populated by individuals.

An ethic of care is meaningless if it is not practiced on a daily basis. No matter how strong the belief that grants it legitimacy, no matter the hard-won history. Within liberatory movements, if the behaviour and the belief do not coincide, then it is as dangerous as any fascist, totalitarian regime. We see this with Western democracies too, who will protect the belief at all costs, regardless of the terror it sows elsewhere. For the cause deems it necessary to exploit, deceive, classify who deserves consideration based on old, uninterrogated prejudices. And so the traditions of inequity remain, the beliefs that found them just have a new flavour. It is how a liberatory movement like the ANC can give lip-service to gender equity and yet allow practices that harm women to flourish, it is how most men still have power and the women who work themselves to the bone to support their causes are valued arbitrarily (and it is invariably women).

To change traditions of leadership, we need to change what we do and what we enable leaders to do. We have to look to their practices and not to their rhetoric to see which beliefs are embodied. It is not enough to believe differently, tradition is a praxis. Transformation is something that must be attended to on a daily basis. Some of the introspective questions we should expect from our leaders are what did I do today to foster an ethic of care, how was I accountable to the people in my charge, did I consider them responsibly before directing them instrumentally, am I treating them all fairly, what is my responsibility within this turn of events, how can I serve them so that they may reciprocate and enable me to bring about this equitable vision of the world? And mostly we should look to what they do and not the flourish of what they say.

Kharnita Mohamed and Mohamed Seedat reflecting on Traditions 2: Everyday Lives of African Men, held in Ethiopia on 28-30 November 2011

Here are the anthropologist Kharnita Mohamed and community psychologist Mohamed Seedat reflecting on Traditions 2: Everyday Lives of African Men, held in Ethiopia on 28-30 November 2011. Kharnita Mohamed is a researcher at and Mohamed Seedat is the director of the University of South Africa's Institute for Social and Health Sciences (ISHS). Part of the project Changing Traditions, Traditions is a travelling biennial pitso of the Programme of Traditions and Transformation (PoTT) within the ISHS. Kharnita Mohamed and Mohamed Seedat are being interviewed on their impressions of the pitso and the debates that took place by peace scholar and psychologist Shahnaaz Suffla of the University of South Africa-Medical Research Council's Safety and Peace Promotion Research Unit. Mandisa Malinga edited the pictures. 

Tammy Shefer, scholar of sexuality and gender, at Traditions 2: Everyday Lives of African Men, Ethiopia 28-30 November 2011

Here is a short video clip of sexuality and gender scholar Tammy Shefer, former director of Women's & Gender Studies Department and Deputy Dean of Arts at the University of Western Cape, South Africa. Professor Shefer was a delegate at Traditions 2: Everyday Lives of African Men, held in Ethiopia on 28-30 November 2011, where she spoke on the paper 'Caring for Change'. She was asked to express her reflections on the event by feminist peace scholar and clinical psychologist Shahnaaz Suffla of the University of South Africa-Medical Research Council's Safety and Peace Promotion Research Unit. The video edited by Mandisa Malinga.

Changing Traditions: Launching PoTT Friday on a Monday

From left: Annelise Krige, Ghouwa Ismail, Natasha Hendricks,

Hilton Donson, Samed Bulbulia, Ashley Van Niekerk,

Anesh Sukhai, Sheriane Kramer, Madeleine Breda, Kharnita

Mohamed, Najuwa Arendse, Kopano Ratele, Naiema Taliep,
 Mandisa Malinga

From a simple idea - wearing to work an orange t-shirt sponsored by Unisa for Traditions 2 - came the idea of potfriday. Well, it's actually PoTT Friday. But potfriday sounds cool and enigmatic, does it not. The idea was Dr Burns' or as he is otherwise known, Prof Ashley Van Niekerk's. He probably couldn't think of anything else to wear on the day. So he wore his bright t-shirt to work on that Friday and from that came the brilliant idea of having a potfriday, where there would be a metaphoric pot of something and everyone in the office would wear their sponsored Traditions t-shirts on Fridays - for who wants to wake up on a Friday and think about what to wear? Now how can such a brilliant idea not be celebrated and made official. This called for a launch of the idea, which in turn called for a (kinda) pot of FOOD, a very common tradition in this place: any excuse to have some cake, samoosas, apple crumble, biscuits. Oh, and some fruit and good laughter. The commencement of was meant to take place on Friday 2 March, but because we continue to change traditions wherever we find them - and what are traditions if not betrayed - Friday was moved to Monday 05 March! How can this outfit not be productive...everyone has had enough dose of sweetness to last the whole month...Well, before then, there will probably be another reason to have good food with great colleagues!!! Thanks to a successful launch and may we continue to embrace the colour orange!!!