Bessie Head’s absorbent poetics: Lessons from co-operative farming in Botswana

Abstract

In her autobiographical novel, A Question of Power (1973), Bessie Head identified a dialectical bind in the language and imagery of decolonial and nationalist movements across Africa at the time. I contrast the novel’s treatment of such language with Head’s observations of the agricultural development projects in which she participated during her time in Botswana, which are distinguished by a relational responsiveness across difference, reflected in their responsiveness to the natural environment. Her involvement as a participant-observer, I argue, allowed Head to develop a unique Afrocentric philosophy and poetics, distinct from and often at odds with the language and ethos of campaigns for national liberation. This poetics is what I term “absorbent”: defined by its capacity for sustaining and responding to difference. However, although Head attempted to transcend the dialectical discourse of nationalism, I show that this effort towards transcendence sometimes risked intellectual deflection, which ultimately reinforced a conservative model of global politics and economics.