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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
Show panel list
Situational Gender and Subversive Sex? African Contributions to Feminist Theorizing
| Panel |
31. Sexuality and Politics in Africa
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| Paper ID | 766 |
| Author(s) |
Arnfred, Signe
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | 'Culture' in Africa is a highly contested terrain. Where African elites invariably have interpreted 'African culture' in manifestly patriarchal ways, some African feminists tap into 'culture' for very different reasons, presenting strikingly different interpretations of social structures in pre-colonial Africa.
With a point of departure in re-interpretations of Nigeria's pre-colonial past, Nigerian gender scholars Ifi Amadiume, Oyeronke Oyewumi and Nkiru Nzegwu (among others) question mainstream Western feminist conceptualizations, such as male/female binares and ideas about 'the universal subordination of women'. Re-analyzing old ethnographic texts and critizising the (generally white, male, Christian) authors' patriarchalizing interpretations of African societies, these scholars come up with a series of alternative conceptualizations, which challenge not only colonial anthropology but also Western feminist lines of thinking.
The idea of situational or flexible gender has been around for some twenty years (since Amadiume's 1987 book: 'Male Daughters, Female Husbands'). 'Situational gender' indicates that gender is separate from biological sex, that gendered social positions may vary independently of male/female bodies, and that hierarchies rarely are based on gender per se (men over women), but rather on seniority, and on positions inside/outside a certain lineage. Some of the ideas developed in this context, such as critique of the sex/gender divide, and critique of fixed male/female dichotomies, coincide in interesting ways with Western queer theory critique of mainstream feminist thinking
African feminist analysis of sexualities is a more recent phenomenon. With a few exceptions it has only taken off over the last five years, decisively pushed by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which (as put by Sylvia Tamale) has "flung open the doors on sexuality, and forced into the open myths and secrets in relationships and identities that are often silenced or taken for granted". African feminists show that marriage and sexuality are not necessarily interlinked in the ways African patriarchs (and the Bible) preach, and that same-sex practices far from being a Western import (as alleged by homophobic African leaders) have existed under specific circumstances in pre-colonial societies all over the continent. The notion of 'subversive sexualities' in the title of the paper captures the fact that in these new studies taken-for-granted links between marriage and (female) sexuality are questioned and investigated, resulting in studies of extra- and transmarital sex, and of same-sex relations.
The point of the paper is to introduce and discuss some African feminist ideas, and to expose for debate ways in which 'African culture' has developed into a battlefield of gender power. The paper will also make a case for the relevance and pertinence of African feminist thinking, in African and beyond.
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