Reflection by Jeanine Viau

After the initial conception and pregnancy of this project, we are now in the groanings of labor. In this space, we will certainly encounter multiple experiences of conception, burden rendering, and spiraling contractions of joy and pain. And already, we have confidence that our initiative will bear abundant fruit.

We will be making many introductions over the next weeks. If our initial introductions are any indication of what these will be like, then they will entail deep a/effection, as well as struggle. My impression is that the relationships between the Kenyan and US participants have formed easily and authentically thus far. I am grateful that we have developed some intimacy very quickly. This, I think has come as a result of shared living space and meals, and a loving willingness to be in community with one another. Our individual research partnerships are still taking shape. These will be more of a struggle, as each of our imaginations resists compromising the integrity of its questions. This negotiation is already an important lesson in meaningful collaboration.

We have had a few lessons in negotiating space and voice, since arriving in Kenya. Our host institution is an anthropologically based institute of African cultural studies. In academic circles, there are ongoing arguments between normative ethical disciplines and classic models of anthropological investigation, specifically concerning the doing and interpreting of ethnography. It has taken several conversations with our host institution to make clear our purpose(s) and secure some measure of autonomy for our work in the field and the classroom. This ongoing discussion is indicative of ongoing interdisciplinary struggles in the wider academy, within anthropological and theological/ethical circles alike. Walking across the threshold at this institution involved entering a predetermined analytical paradigm of cultural immersion, utilizing a list of definitive categorical domains for organizing cultural beliefs, along with static answers plugged into these boxes for the African and Western contexts. Several of us experienced significant cognitive dissonance with this model, particularly with the contradiction between an advocacy for objective, unbiased cultural immersion, and a predetermined categorical structure of interpretation.

Also, our host institution is committed to recovering and preserving the differences between Western and Traditional African culture. This is an honorable endeavor, but even our African cohorts are very suspicious of this commitment. Their question is, which Traditional African culture are you talking about? As it stands, they collapse all of these cultures under the umbrella of ‘African culture.’ I could ask the same quesiton regarding the Western, even just the American context; not every community fits neatly into the categorical dichotomies determined by the host program. One of the primary objectives of our project is to acknowledge, honor, and discover some particularities of radical hybridity in the global context, and especially in postcolonial spaces and persons. We all become persons of reflection intimately connected to this space as either members of the dominated society, or the dominating society (or multiple variations). We prefer a commitment to complexity, which recognizes that cultural domains are somewhat superficial, and cannot neatly explain the cultural contradictions within each individual, community, and society.

Anne’s classroom has become a liminal bubble within the institutional walls, a heart beating and fluttering with the anticipation of bursting. We have met resistance from male students in other summer courses, asking why there aren’t any men in the class, and how then can we have a balanced perspective (wouldn’t we learn more)? The question even came up from a field assistant in the class: we are talking about a feminist theology, what about a masculine theology? Anne articulately responded that all theology, really, almost all intellectual reflection up to the 1960’s, is a product of the malestream imagination. She recalled having had a man in this class several years ago, who was not there to learn, only to argue with her. This is the mentality we seek to resist. They say we are closed minded, congregating behind closed doors, and bringing with us predetermined biases, but often it is them who refuse to hear what we are saying, what has been born out of our own experiences of injustice.

Anne gives us a new model for reflection from the work of Letty Russell and others. We are working with ‘A Theological Spiral of Action,’ where the individual (1) reflect on experience (particularly an experience of injustice); (2) analyzes the social reality attending to political economic, social, cultural, and intellectual forms of oppression; (3) questions tradition, Biblical and Church teaching in the case of theology; (4) then searches for clues to transformations and strategies for action; [and (5) brings those insights into practice]. This model focuses on particular encounters and experiences, rather than organizing into broad general categories of interpretation. It recognizes that there is no such thing as pure objectivity in research and pedagogy; rather, all projects are always engaged for or against the oppressed. The larger framework is the Spiral of reflection and action, connecting all of our points of contradiction and insight together. And when multiple spirals intertwine, the hybrid spaces of creativity, contradiction, and coherence are infinitely complex and the possibilities for action are endless.

So maybe, our child is still a fleck of gold on the horizon or is still resting in the hammock of the womb or is commencing the Spiral of travail. Definitely it is all of these at once. And this community will surely be blessed with multiple children, several daughters willing to continue walking down the Spiral Staircase.