practices that are often explained as simply a self-evident part of us, part of our cultures or vanquished traditions. The need to remain vigilant against all domi­nant practices, particularly those that appear obvious and straightforward, thus continues to exist. I think where one finds or builds this insubordinate vigilance against simple categories, one is likely […]

Elsewhere I have argued against engaging in regressive practices and representa­tions in our pains to want to know ourselves and to find our homes again (Ratele 2001). Given the persisting, intractable white masculine traditions of depicting African, black and third world peoples, it is excusable, even understandable, when one comes upon a wish to overturn […]

with Fanon’s question, Fanon being among the list of authors prescribed for the class. The aim of this chapter is part of an ongoing project to think about practices surrounding the multiple, shifting, piled up, crosscutting divisions that re-write our identifications and relationships, in order to sharpen our appreciation of the histories of the current […]

Kopano Ratele Introduction If ‘the sexual superiority of the Negro’ is not really ‘real’, as Fanon (1986:159) is at pains to show in his work on black and white sexual desire and fear, what pro­pels or pulls questions about the bodies, skins, buttocks, penises, vaginas, and lips of Africans as interesting into our presence? Fanon’s […]

been the empowering effects of a woman’s structural resources (or a man’s lack of these) by reducing a woman’s sense of entitlement, in this case, to determine the couple’s fertility regime. These power differences govern the resolution of de­cision-making, especially in instances of disagreement, and yet this aspect of com­promise is not captured in the […]

Kobla is a 45 year-old accounts clerk at the university and, at the time of the in­terview, Delali, his wife, aged 35, is not working outside the home. Together the couple have three children, a 9-year-old daughter, Esi, a 7-year-old son, Kofi, and a baby boy, Yao. Before Yao’s birth Delali had worked as a […]

where pregnancies were terminated—whose decision it was to opt for an abor­tion. Grace and Akwasi: What happened to Grace’s ‘unmet need’? Grace is a 48 year-old assistant head cook in one of the student halls of residence and her husband Akwasi is a 55 year-old laboratory technician. Grace has one daughter and a son by […]

bands’ revisions may in fact cancel each other out depending on who does more of such ‘revising’ of preferences.[98] In the next sections I focus on the cases of three couples that show how ‘unmet need’ can be masked or overstated.[99] Nana and Nortey: When ‘unmet need’ is not really unmet need Nana is a […]

Whose ‘unmet need’?—Issues of dis/agreement Reproductive decision-making is a complex process, differing from one couple to the next, as the ensuing analysis illustrates. Generally, even though the large scale surveys that have interviewed both husbands and wives can be used to assess dif­ferences in preferences for children and attitudes to family planning, the underly­ing processes, […]

one couple, Nana and Nortey is especially revealing (and poignant) in that it re­veals the couple-based dynamics involved in Nana’s decision to have an abortion, presumably to meet an ‘unmet need’ for spacing. To date statistical analysis of the relationships between levels of ‘unmet need’, levels of abortion and contraceptive prevalence provide ambivalent findings. In […]