African feminism as decolonising force A philosophical exploration of the work of Oyèrónké Oyĕwùmí Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za African feminism as decolonising force: a philosophical exploration of the work of Oyèrónké Oyĕwùmí By Azille Alta Coetzee Dissertation presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Stellenbosch University Promotors: Prof. HL Du Toit and Prof. W Goris Co-promotor: Prof. JM Halsema December 2017 Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT African feminism as decolonising force: a philosophical exploration of the work of Oyèrónké Oyĕwùmí ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad Doctor aan de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, op gezag van de rector magnificus prof.dr. V. Subramaniam, in het openbaar te verdedigen ten overstaan van de promotiecommissie van de Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen op dinsdag 4 april 2017 om 13.45 uur in de aula van de universiteit, De Boelelaan 1105 door Azille Alta Coetzee geboren te Johannesburg, Zuid Afrika Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za promotoren: prof.dr. W. Goris dr. H.L. Du Toit copromotor: dr. J.M. Halsema Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za To my mother and my grandmother Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Cover art: The Sankofa Bird by Marina Patarnello Acknowledgments I firstly want to thank my two amazing supervisors and feminist philosopher role models, Annemie and Louise, for their dedication, patience, support and hard work throughout the process of writing this dissertation, and all the many ways in which they continue to inspire me. Thank you to Dorothy Stevens at the International Office of Stellenbosch University for all the help in arranging and figuring out the different aspects of the joint degree agreement. Thanks to Colette Gerards and Femke van den Bosch at the VU International Office for supporting me with the move to Amsterdam and helping with the arrangement of visas and other administrative things. Thank you to all the various funders of my research: Ema2sa, Harry Crossley, Zuid-Afrika Huis, Stellenbosch University Merit Bursary and the Aspasia Grant of the VU. Thank you to Marina for the beautiful cover art and all the glasses of red wine we shared over the past two years. Lastly, thank you to my family, friends and loved ones for the countless big and small ways in which they supported, motivated and energised me in the process of writing this dissertation. Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION…1 I Preliminary remarks…1 II A brief introduction to Oyĕwùmí and the reception of her work…1 III Sub-Saharan feminist scholarship: an outline…4 IV Sub-Saharan African feminism and sub-Saharan African feminist philosophy in context…8 V Oyĕwùmí’s feminism as decolonising force…12 VI A note on the distinction between the empirical and the philosophical in the work of Oyĕwùmí… 15 VII Notes on terminology…16 VIII Summary of chapters…21 CHAPTER ONE: GENDER AND DIFFERENCE IN THE WORK OF OYĔWÙMÍ…24 I Introduction…24 II Some introductory remarks on the Nigerian and Yorùbá contexts…25 III Oyĕwùmí and the colonial invention of woman in Yorùbá society…27 IV The relationship between Africa and the West in the work of Oyĕwùmí…36 V Conclusion…43 CHAPTER TWO: OYĔWÙMÍ AND THE SUB-SAHARAN TRADITION OF RELATIONAL THOUGHT…45 I Introduction…45 II The relational and non-dichotomous construction of the subject and the world in sub-Saharan African philosophy…46 III The relational and non-dichotomous construction of the subject and the world in Oyĕwùmí’s work…54 IV Implications of Oyĕwùmí’s work for the sub-Saharan tradition of relational thought…64 V Conclusion…67 CHAPTER THREE: AFRICAN FEMINISM AS DECOLONISING FORCE…69 I Introduction…69 II Colonialism, coloniality and decolonisation…70 III Gender and colonisation in the Yorùbá society…75 IV The relation between gender, race and colonialism…83 V Conclusion…87 CHAPTER FOUR: IRIGARAY AND OYĔWÙMÍ IN DIALOGUE ABOUT THE SACRIFICIAL METAPHYSICS OF THE WESTERN SYMBOLIC ORDER…89 I Introduction…89 II Irigaray’s diagnosis of the Western symbolic order…90 III How can this system be shifted? ... 96 IV Reading Irigaray alongside Oyĕwùmí…98 V Critical reflections: race…101 VI Critical reflections: the subject…106 VII Critical reflections: gender duality and multiplicity…109 VIII Conclusion…112 CHAPTER FIVE: MOTHERHOOD…114 I Introduction…114 II De Beauvoir’s analysis of the problem of motherhood in the sacrificial economy of Western patriarchy…116 III Irigaray, motherhood and the undoing of the burial of the maternal feminine…119 IV Motherhood in precolonial Yorùbá society…122 V Consequences for subjectivity…131 VI Motherhood as political, symbolic category exceeding biological reproduction …138 VII Decolonising power of motherhood…143 VIII Conclusion …145 Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za CONCLUSION…147 I The dilemma of African feminism and African feminist thought…147 II Oyĕwùmí and the colonial invention of women in Yorùbá society…148 III Oyĕwùmí and sub-Saharan African philosophy…149 IV Oyĕwùmí and Irigaray…151 V The feminism of Oyĕwùmí as decolonising force…153 SUMMARY…155 Bibliography…159 Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za INTRODUCTION I Preliminary remarks Sub-Saharan African feminist voices have been largely absent from philosophical discourse in the Western and African worlds, but also from global Western feminist debates and the discourses on the decolonisation of Africa. In this dissertation I present the work of Nigerian feminist sociologist Oyèrónké Oyĕwùmí as having the power to disrupt sub- Saharan African philosophy, Western feminist thought and discourses on African decolonisation in highly significant and surprising ways. The idea is to show how Oyĕwùmí as African feminist, who is rendered inaudible and invisible in dominant processes and sites of knowledge production, occupies a unique epistemological position that is rich in resources to subvert, rupture and enrich the dominant systems of knowledge. In this introduction I will briefly introduce Oyĕwùmí’s work, the reception of her work, and the theoretical fields to which she contributes. I will also outline my main questions, explain my use of certain terms, and provide a chapter summary. II A brief introduction to Oyĕwùmí and the reception of her work Oyĕwùmí is a Nigerian feminist scholar who is an associate professor in sociology at Stony Brook University in the United States. She grew up in Nigeria, attended the University of Ibadan and later moved to the United States to study at Berkeley. Oyĕwùmí is one of the most famous figures in sub-Saharan African feminist thought. She was put on the map with the publication of her book The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (1997) in which she offers a postcolonial feminist critique of Western dominance in African knowledge production, focusing specifically on gender relations among the Yorùbá people of Nigeria. She has written numerous articles on African feminism and edited three other books, namely African Women and Feminism: Reflecting on the Politics of Sisterhood (2003), African Gender Studies: A Reader (2005) and Gender Epistemologies in Africa: Gendering Traditions, Spaces, Social Institutions, and Identities (2010). In 2016 she published a new book, called What Gender is Motherhood? Changing Yorùbá Ideals of Power, Procreation and Identity in the Age of Modernity. Oyĕwùmí argues that gender is a colonial imposition in Yorùbá society which led to the fundamental distortion of all areas of life. She shows that the colonial systems imposed on Yorùbá entail more than a socio-political reordering of gender relations, but represent a different construction of the subject and the world. Oyĕwùmí (1997) famously argues that the category of ‘woman’ did not exist in precolonial Yorùbá thought and society and that its existence in present day Yorùbá society is a product of colonial rule in Nigeria. According to Oyĕwùmí the category of ‘woman’ operative in Western thought and also in Western feminism inevitably designates a subordinate position that is only defined in negative terms in relation to man. She claims that in precolonial Yorùbá society differences in sexed bodies did not translate into this kind of hierarchy. She also criticises Western feminism for assuming the existence of this hierarchical gender scheme when analysing Yorùbá society, thereby reproducing and perpetuating this foreign scheme in Yorùbá society. In her book Invention of Women Oyĕwùmí writes in general terms about the epistemic shift brought about by 1 Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za the colonial imposition of gender on Yorùbá society. In her latest book What Gender is Motherhood? Changing Yorùbá Ideals of Power, Procreation, and Identity in the Age of Modernity she explains the exact nature of this shift as ‘a move away from the indigenous seniority-based matripotent ethos to a male-dominant, gender-based one’ (Oyĕwùmí 2016:7). In this book Oyĕwùmí regards the mother (or Iya) to occupy a central position in the precolonial epistemology of the Yorùbá people. She therefore explores the precolonial Yorùbá epistemology1 and the shift that was caused by colonialism with reference to the notion of motherhood and the concept of ‘matripotency’ (the supremacy of motherhood) (Oyĕwùmí 2016:7). As mentioned above, Oyĕwùmí is a sociologist, accordingly, to a large extent her analysis is ethnographical. However, she deems her project to be first and foremost epistemological. In the opening line of the preface to her book Invention of Women she writes: ‘[t]his book is about the epistemological shift occasioned by the imposition of Western gender categories on Yorùbá discourse’ (Oyĕwùmí 1997: ix). She uses her ethnographical description and sociological understanding of the precolonial Yorùbá society as basis for making the philosophical argument that the dominant (Western) categories through which we understand the world are not universal, but culturally specific and therefore contingent.