African Political Thought · Unit 11
African Feminist Philosophy
Two scholars who each argued that the rigid gender categories colonialism claimed to find in Africa were largely colonialism's own invention
This unit examines two of the most influential and most contested works in African feminist philosophy: Oyeronke Oyewumi's argument that precolonial Yoruba society organized itself around seniority rather than a Western-style biological gender binary, and Ifi Amadiume's ethnographic study of Igbo 'male daughters' and 'female husbands,' documenting genuine gender flexibility that colonial rule subsequently rigidified into patriarchy. Both scholars argue, in different ways, that colonialism did not simply add oppression to existing African gender hierarchy but actively constructed a new, more rigid gender hierarchy where a considerably more fluid social system had existed before.
Learning Objectives
- •Students will be able to explain Oyeronke Oyewumi's argument that seniority, not gender, organized precolonial Yoruba society, and evaluate her claim that the concept of 'woman' as understood in Western discourse did not exist in Yorubaland before colonization.
- •Students will analyze Ifi Amadiume's ethnographic documentation of 'male daughters' and 'female husbands' in precolonial Igbo society, and explain her explicit rejection of contemporary diaspora readings that recast these institutions as historical lesbian relationships.
- •Students will evaluate the scholarly counter-critique, including from Carole Boyce Davies and Nwando Achebe, that Oyewumi's argument may rest on insufficient precolonial historical evidence and risks its own form of romanticization.
- •Students will connect this unit's debate about the reliability of oral tradition and etymological analysis directly to the ethnophilosophy debate examined earlier in this course, evaluating whether the same methodological standards should apply.