The continuation of the species is the most fundamental biological impulse. Indeed, much of the Christian Bible and its Old Testament Jewish antecedents revolve around issues of preserving specific lines, eliminating undesirables, the fostering of a deliberate consciousness geared towards the continuation of a “special” group and the observation of strict rules to ensure the success of the project. Scary stuff. No wonder Hitler was so envious.
It is for this reason that sexual politics, or the control of human sexuality, constitutes such a major part of religion, social mores, public morality, legislative rules and formal and informal socialisation processes. It should come as no surprise then that such a basic and unconscious biological imperative would find itself translated in the psychological, material, social, economic and political impulses of man throughout the millennia.
As such therefore, the recent debate about mandatory DNA testing for all newborns represents only a very small part of this discourse, but it is inextricably linked to it and can only be fully understood when placed in a broader intellectual context.
A central issue spurring the patriarchal impulse to control female sexuality is the male anxiety over the paternity of his children. Put differently, because the man does not carry the child, “men are never sure”.
Writers such as the great Senegalese thinker Chiekh Anta Diop have been at great pains to show that some very critical cultural differences separating European from African society spring from the manner in which this anxiety is “resolved”.
Diop argues that in European society, this anxiety translates itself in the extreme forms of oppression used to control the female, given the development of individualistic, capitalistic material possession as central economic principles. Compounded by the harsher and less hospitable climate, the European developed a hoarding and “every man for himself” mentality as his only security against future want.
As such it became very important to the European to ensure that his property (future security) passed to his lineage, (and not one deceptively attributed to him), hence the control of the female was so essential. No wonder Eve, and women in general, received such a bad rap in all European religion.
Pre-colonial African society developed a far superior institutional mechanism for addressing the male psychological anxiety of child paternity – the principle of matriarchy. All children trace their lineages to their mother. Her communal economic systems reduced economic insecurity. Africa embraced sexuality.
Significantly, civilisations which place a high value on purity of lineage, generally take the far superior route of matriarchy, as a guarantee against deception. For example, one is only a Jew when one’s mother is a Jew.
The science of DNA reduces lineage fraud but perhaps threatens too much of the current economic and social order.
MESA, however, has opened something. As democrats, we should let all ideas contend.
• Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, specializing in regional affairs. Email tjoe2008@live.com
