The Interior Life of Mtutu: Psychological Fact or Fiction?

Abstract

This article seeks to understand the routes to, and pasts, possibilities and forms of, the interior world of the African or black person in its relations to the politics and economy of superiority and separation. The world that is explored is primarily sexual, and therefore, incorporates embodied life, but of necessity widens to include affective, cognitive, and purposeful aspects. In the face of the scarcity of scholarly psychological literature in the area of the intimate lives of black individuals, particularly when seen against the backcloth of colonial and apartheid arrangements, the article begins by arguing for the importance of turning to other, imaginative, sources for help in trying to comprehend African interiors. It then turns to meanings of intimacy on which interiority is indexed, going on to discuss the notion in relation to the social, political and economic history of South Africa, while taking in the notion of soul along the way. Next, the interest of colonial and apartheid regimes in intimacy is traced, showing that this interest stretched beyond interpersonal relations to the very calculus of discrimination and domination. The article concludes by urging African scholars to take black inner life a little more seriously and without abandoning creativity, still locating such efforts within radical and ethical theoretical frameworks.