Female Subjectivities in African Literature

204 Pages·2015·3.499 MB·English

by  Charles Smith, Chin Ce

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S MIT HAN C
FEMALE
SUBJECTIVITIES
IN AFRICAN LITERATURE
Smith and Ce [ed.]
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FEMALE SUBJECTIVITIES -in African Literature
Smith and Ce (Ed.)
©African Library of Critical Writing
Print Edition
ISBN: 978-9-7837-0362-9
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Contents
Introduction 7
Chapter 1
Silencing the Abusers 9
Chapter 2
Subjectivity in the 'Eye' of Morrison 26
Chapter 3
Rotimi's Drama and the Gender Issue 50
Chapter 4
Rethinking the African Woman's Identity 70
Chapter 5
The Conflicts of Fall and Osammor 88
Chapter 6
The Women of Ousmane and Dlamini 101
Chapter 7
Female Subjectivity in Achebe's Novels 116
Chapter 8
Female Sexuality in 8essora's Novel 138
Chapter 9
Enekwe's Feminine Archetypes 154
Chapter 10
Women, Race and Liberation 165
Notes and Bibliography
6
Introduction
The New Female Subjectivitie�
AT some point in the so called advancement in human
civihsation the patrilineal principle overthrew the pristine
divine feminine taking precedence over the matrilineal in
all civil, religious, political and cultural institutions.
Socio-economic structures also became pattemed to
privilege the phallocentric order.
Tbrough western civilization women have confronted
what they perceive to be male domination of affairs in
human society where it had seemed that facets of the
society must conform to the male order before they are
adjudged to be correct. The ensuing political strategy is
to institute hierarchies that maintain and perpetuate male
ascendancy and hegemony over the female. Under this
asynunetrical terrain, the definition of individual
subjectivity is executed essentially through the sieve of
self and the other. A sexist and gender-specific monad in
human existence has reduced individuality and refracted
life and existence through gender politics and paradigms
in the rigidity of maleness and femaleness without
appreciating the complementarity of the two sexes.
In literature the ambiguous portraiture of female
characters by some male writers and the phallic nature of
men's writings have proved a matter of concern to female
writers in Africa. For decades within African writing the
issue of silencing was interrogated particularly as it
addressed the muting and marginalisation of black
women by male writers and the script of patriarchy which
men follow.
In this series we continue the literary and dramatic
tradition of feminist concern for women's issues, and we
review novels, plays and poetry which demonstrate a
commitment to exploring the challenges facing modern
women in changing times and excerpting the issues of
gender, feminism, identity, race, history, national and
international politics specifically as they affect women.
Female Subjectivities collectively answers the need to
question and adumbrate the possibilities of literary
revisions, showing what it would mean to revise even the
Feminist psychoanalyst in a discourse on the subjectivity
of women of colour.
Smith andCe
8
Chapter 1
Silencing the Abusers
DShober
FOR decades the issue of silencing has been
interrogated within African writing particularly as it
addresses the muting and marginalization of black women
by male African writers and the script of patriarchy which
they follow.
Chinua Achebe, heralded as the father of African
literature, and renowned for his historical African novels
as well as his textual and discursive criticisms of
colonialism, was earlier taken to task by female critics
such as Rosa Ure Mezu and Andrea Powell for his de­
centralization of women as portrayed as portrayed within
the African tribal community. Powell argues that
Achebe's "historical novels consistently side-line the
place of the postcolonial woman in order to focus on
postcolonial manhood" (167). Achebe explores the
hierarchy of gendered positions and the potency of
African masculinity through Okonkwo the male
protagonist of Things Fall Apart who affIrms that "[no]
matter how prosperous a man [is], if he [is] unable to rule
his women and his children (and especially his woman)
he [is] not really a man" (53). In many instances this
control is exerted by physical violence resulting in his
three wives living "in perpetual fear of his fiery temper"
(13). Nor are the women in his two historical texts Things
Fall Apart or Arrow of God ever able to fmd to relief or
release from the aggressive subjugation under which they
live. Yet in his fifth novel Anthills of the Savannah,
Achebe does create a transformed female character.
Beatrice is an empowered individual whose voice is that
of prophetess and her role likened to a goddess (105). As
Emezue underscores: "Of all the characters in the novel
she understands at the end the importance of living a
purposeful life" (250) and "recognizes the real meaning of
human existence" (251), her voice radiates strength and
vision to her ravaged community. But not all male
African writers create such substantial, autonomous
female characters.
Christine Obbo writes that "the need to control women
has always been an important part of male success in
African societies" (4), and literature, ever mimetic of
reality has authentically captured this. Over the years,
many black African women writers have been creatively
correcting this notion of black African permissible
aggressive dominance. Their narrative resistance to
patriarchal subjugation and silencing has enabled them to
craft female characters who voice their own autonomous,
self-governing destiny.
Susan Arndt in her book The Dynamics of African
Feminism notes that "African feminists hope to sensitize
men to the discrimination which women experience due
to the patriarchal structures of their societies as well as the
behavior of individual men ... [and] count on men's
fundamental ability to free themselves from
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discriminatory behavior " (73). But she warns that "men
who disappoint this trust and are impervious to the
emancipator endeavors of the women or even stand in
their way are regarded as enemies against whom war must
be declared" (73).
Ogundipe-Leslie articulated at the fIrst Women In
Nigeria conference that "men become enemies when they
seek to retard, even block, these necessary historical
changes for selfIsh interests in power, when they claim
'culture and heritage' as if human societies are not
constructed by human beings, when they plead and laugh
about the 'natural and enduring inferiority of women'"
(82). Ama Ata Aidoo declares that "[u]nless a particular
writer commits his or her energies, actively, to exposing
the sexist tragedy of women's history; protesting the
ongoing degradation of women; celebrating their physical
and intellectual capabilities, and above all, unfolding a
revolutionary vision of the role [of women],' he or she
cannot be pronounced a feminist" (33).
The question may be asked how black African men
have blocked or denied black women a signifIcant place
within, at least, literary representation. As at a least some
of their novels reflect, seminal black African male writers
have stereotyped at best or silenced at worst their female
characters. Sindiwe Magona challenges this silencing and
misrepresentation in her appeal to other black women
writers:
"My beloved sisters, our men have not loved us
enough, they have not honoured us enough; they have not
respected us enough to make us equal partners. Thus, we
have no voice. In the New Millennium, let us wait no
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