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Pregnancy and Bodies of Knowledge in a South African University

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2013

Teresa Barnes
Teresa Barnes*
Affiliation:
Teresa Barnes is an associate professor in the Departments of History and Gender/Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She was previously on the faculty of the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa. Her major research and publications are in the areas of gender, urban history, institutional culture, and higher education history in Zimbabwe and South Africa. E-mail: tbarnes2@illinois.edu
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Abstract:

Based on a classroom encounter of the author, this article explores the gendered nature of African university space. It discusses a 2007–8 policy that banned pregnant adult students from living in the student residence halls at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa. The policy was implemented despite protests from the university’s students and staff. The article argues that the more visibly reproductive a student’s body became, the more alien it was considered to be in spaces of knowledge production. This alienation was incongruous at a university widely considered as the most politically progressive in South Africa. It was rooted, however, in Western-oriented traditions of masculinist knowledge production in which there is no space for the female, let alone the pregnant, body in intellectual spaces; and in South African traditions of marginalization, exclusion, and “passing” in public space. Exploring ideas of “body language” and “bodies of knowledge,” the article concludes that there is a need for an interdisciplinary politics and epistemology of “seepage” in higher educational institutions that recognizes women’s minds and their bodies.

Résumé:

En se sur basant une rencontre scolaire avec l’auteur, cet article explore la nature sexuée de l’espace universitaire en Afrique. Nous examinons un règlement établi en 2007–8 qui bannissait les étudiantes adultes enceintes des résidences universitaires à l’université du Western Cape à Cape Town en Afrique du sud. Ce règlement a été mis en place en dépit de manifestations menées par les étudiants et les employés de l’université. Cet article soutient que plus le corps étudiant montrait des signes visibles de reproduction, plus il s’est trouvé banni des lieux de production de la connaissance. Cette aliénation était incongrue dans l’université reconnue comme la plus progressiste en Afrique du Sud. Ce règlement était enraciné dans des traditions occidentales intellectuelles sexistes dans lesquelles il n’y a pas de place pour la femme et encore moins la femme enceinte, ainsi que dans des traditions sud-africaines de marginalisation, d’exclusion et de passage dans l’espace public. En explorant les idées de langage corporel et d’étendue des connaissances, cet article conclut qu’il y a un besoin pour une politique interdisciplinaire et une épistémologie de la “fuite” dans les institutions d’éducation supérieure qui reconnaissent à la fois l’esprit et le corps féminins.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , April 2013 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2013 

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