Portraying political violence rape and masculinit (2024)

A Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis of the Tropes of (Sexually) Objectified or/and Oppressed Men in Selected Contemporary African Prose Works

This paper examines the tropes of (sexually) objectified or/and oppressed men in selected contemporary African prose works. Drawing on Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth, FCDA) for theoretical underpinnings, Systemic Functional Linguistics (henceforth, SFL) for grammatical tools and the qualitative research method, this study seeks to analyze how contemporary feminist writers like Amma Darko, Daniel Mengara, and Lola Shoneyin employ language in their fictional texts The Housemaid (1998), Mema (2003) and The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives (2015) respectively to represent the phenomenon of (sexually) objectified or/and oppressed male characters. This article cogently argues that the tropes of (sexually) objectified or/and oppressed men, as enacted in the aforementioned prose works, encode a form of gendered experience which irrefutably has a given recondite function or meaning which only a critical linguistic analysis of the writers' language can uncover. The findings reveal that the three authors intentionally use language to depict their male personae as (sexually) objectified or/and oppressed individuals with a view to challenging the established social order in social life and establishing a certain balance in the representation of gender or/and power relations in African literature.

MEN AND WOMEN WRITING WOMEN: A READING OF SELECTED CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN NOVELS

This dissertation examines how some selected contemporary African male and female writers portray women's struggle against gender inequality, oppression and their quest for full personhood in the African patriarchal setting of the novels. It draws its theoretical underpinnings from womanism and radical feminism to critically examine four selected contemporary African novels such as Mema (2003),A Beautiful Daughter (2012),The Housemaid (1998) and The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives (2010). The first two novels were respectively written by male authors, Daniel Mengara and Asare Adei whereas the last two were published by female writers, Amma Darko and Lola Shoneyin. The study reveals that the contemporary African male and female writers portray women who attack and deconstruct the patriarchal structures oppressing women through womanism and radical feminism. The womanist or radical feminist stratagems used by the women vary from one woman to another. Their change of concept or ideology is motivated by social problems or circumstantial problems like gender inequality, injustice, humiliation, dehumanization and domestic violence. The writers, by portraying their characters in this sense, have denounced some violent stratagems such as the abuse of children, men and even fellow women that the women use in advocating their rights.

European Journal of Social Sciences Studies CULTURE: A VESSEL FOR FEMALE SUBORDINATION IN THREE AFRICAN NOVELS

Since the dawn of time, women generally have had fewer legal rights and status in society than their male counterparts. The continuous subordination and suppression of women are further aggravated by traditions, cultural beliefs and religions of most societies which favor patriarchy. Using the radical feminist approach, the present paper attempts an exploration of patriarchy as an aspect of culture which helps to subordinate women as highlighted in Nawal El Saadawi's A Woman at Point Zero (1983), Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood (1979), and Amma Darko's Beyond the Horizon (1995). It also examines the steps taken by the women to free themselves from the ‚chains‛ of male domination and oppression. The study revealed that cultural practices such as polygamy, female genital mutilation and sexual abuse facilitate the abuse, subjugation and oppression of women in the novels under study. The study has implications for the theory of feminism and literary criticisms.

Gender Frustration in the African Novel: Matters Arising

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2023

CULTURE: A VESSEL FOR FEMALE SUBORDINATION IN THREE AFRICAN NOVELS

Since the dawn of time, women generally have had fewer legal rights and status in society than their male counterparts. The continuous subordination and suppression of women are further aggravated by traditions, cultural beliefs and religions of most societies which favor patriarchy. Using the radical feminist approach, the present paper attempts an exploration of patriarchy as an aspect of culture which helps to subordinate women as highlighted in Nawal El Saadawi's A Woman at Point Zero (1983), Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood (1979), and Amma Darko's Beyond the Horizon (1995). It also examines the steps taken by the women to free themselves from the ‚chains‛ of male domination and oppression. The study revealed that cultural practices such as polygamy, female genital mutilation and sexual abuse facilitate the abuse, subjugation and oppression of women in the novels under study. The study has implications for the theory of feminism and literary criticisms.

Raped Africa, Mother Africa, Emasculated Africa: The evolution of the gendered national body in the fiction of Abdulai Sila

Babilónia: Línguas, Culturas e Traducao, No. 13 (2013), Lusofonia Pós-colonial: Línguas, Literaturas e Identidades

The exploitation and trauma of the colonised nation has often been written upon the female body, and in turn the land has been accorded feminine characteristics. European colonisers talked of their divine, patriotic mission to penetrate virgin lands in order to inseminate them with the seed of civilisation. This allegory evolved in postcolonial discourse into the figurative rape of the colonised land and the societies that inhabited them. With the figuring of the nation as family (McClintock, 1993) the innate femininity of the native land was perpetuated in African nationalists’ and Pan-Africanists’ romanticisation of their origins as Mother Africa. This paper will examine the gendering of the bodies upon which the narrative of the nation is written in the three novels of the Bissau-Guinean author Abdulai Sila. A Última Tragédia (1995), his second published work but whose narrative sits chronologically first of his three novels, centres on the trope of the female Africa in inscribing the colonial nation upon the body of his protagonist Ndani as she symbolically undergoes the physical, psychological and cultural violations which likewise oppressed the nation. Eterna Paixão (1994) features the romanticisation of Africa as the loving, vital, fecund Mother, a symbolism which spills onto female bodies as the African American protagonist’s tempestuous connection with the post colonial continent is reflected in his relationships with the homely African Mother figure and the sexually charged, morally deviant African Woman. Finally, this paper will explore and interrogate Sila’s innovative evolution of the post-independence national body into the emasculated man in Mistida (1997). Here the male body becomes the site upon which the corruption and political violence brewing in the years preceding the 1998 civil war and their grave consequences upon Guinea Bissau’s social fabric are figured in the physical disabilities, psychological scarring and social incapacities of poignantly male characters.

Men and Women Revisiting Women’s Conventional Roles in Selected Contemporary African Novels

2021

Many theorists, feminist scholars, and critics have been divided on the question of if it is possible for both men and women to adequately write about women. This article examines how some contemporary men and women have redefined and represented African women in their fiction, discharging them of conventional roles in patriarchal settings. To prove this, we examine instances of reversal of women’s conventional roles through womanist and radical feminist trends in four selected contemporary African novels written by both men and women: Mema (2003), A Beautiful Daughter (2012), The Housemaid (1998), and The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives (2010). The first two novels are respectively written by men, Daniel Mengara and Asare Adei, whereas the last two were written by women, Amma Darko and Lola Shoneyin. There are similarities in the ways contemporary African authors write about women in their fictional texts. For instance, they sometimes switch from a patriarchal ideology to a matri...

Journal of International Women's Studies Unbending Gender Narratives in African Literature

Language, Power and Ideology: A Critical Linguistics Analysis of Gender Representation in Stretches of an African Female Prose Fiction

2017

Abstract The current paper posits that our ideologies shape the way we use language to maintain (unequal) power relations between social groupings, particularly between men and women. It seeks to unravel how some discursive practices (or language use) can contribute to producing, sustaining and changing social relations of power between male and female. For that purpose, some stretches of discourse are drawn from a fictional narrative (notably Faceless) authored by a contemporary female writer (Amma Darko). The analysis of those discourse samples from a critical linguistics perspective has revealed that in its everyday use, language contributes to the domination of women by their male counterparts, maintaining between them an unequal power relationship based on common-sense assumptions or ideologies. Key words: Critical Linguistics, gender, ideology, language, power. Résumé Le présent article présume que nos idéologies façonnent notre manière d’utiliser la langue pour maintenir les relations (inégales) de pouvoir entre les groupes sociaux, en l’occurrence entre les hommes et les femmes. Il cherche à démontrer comment des pratiques discursives (ou discours) peuvent contribuer à produire, soutenir et changer des relations sociales de pouvoir entre l’homme et la femme. Dans cette perspective, quelques extraits de discours sont tirés d’une œuvre de fiction (notamment Faceless) dont l’auteur est une écrivaine contemporaine (Amma Darko). L’analyse de ces extraits de discours, suivant une approche de la linguistique critique, a révélé que la langue contribue, dans son usage quotidien, à la domination des femmes par les hommes, maintenant entre eux une relation inégale de pouvoir basée sur des postulats de sens commun ou idéologies. Mots clés: Linguistique Critique, genre, idéologie, langue, pouvoir.

Thematic changes in postcolonial African literature: From colonialism to neocolonialism