"Stiwanism: Feminism in an African Context"
by Molara Ogundipe-Leslie
I really liked the passionate and personal aspect of this essay. Molara outlines the main attitudes towards feminism in Africa. Not only that, she outlines the problems in defining feminism and the "African context," because of the diversity of thought around the two concepts. Two major strands of thoughts about feminism in Africa, according to Molara, are:
1 - African women have never been oppressed
or
2 - there are two levels of oppression: colonial history and gender
The aspect of her essay that I found most interesting is the discussion about "essentialised blackness" (543-4). Although she presents it in very totalising ways ("I am now talking about the peasant majority Africans" (544)), Molara's deliberate push against what she sees as a flawed search for colour purity (543) is quite productive. She talks about not identifying as a "black woman" because she wasn't socialised to describe herself in those terms. This is a really important point because it emphasises the need to redefine social categories.
I think the poem was my favourite aspect of Molara's analysis. She mentions the use of the possessive "I" and how this turns the writer into a Prometheus figure who "does not yet have time for women's rights" (546). All the while he describes the world as his, I couldn't help notice the manipulative use of the plural pronoun "us" and "you and I":
Why should they be allowed
to come between us?
You and I were slaves together
uprooted and humiliated together
Rapes and lynchings... (546)
The women are included in the suffering but are made to look as if they're ungrateful for wanting to heal from this suffering and grow as a community. I think this is the most powerful way that Molara could have expressed her desire for Stiwanism.
It would be interesting to look back on the texts we've read for this course and trace the instances of Stiwanism. The one example that comes to mind is Aila, and her rise to the political sphere. Gordimer presents this as a very private and silent rise, which raises a lot of questions about what is necessary for this cultural dynamism that Molara puts forth as an important aspect of feminism (547)? Is it rallies or is it a deliberate reshaping of the private sphere in order to include the public? Where is the line drawn between the private and the public? Molara rightly says that gender roles are not only about sharing the washing of dishes (545). Aila is able to move into this sphere without the equal distribution of traditional domestic roles.
One aspect of the essay that troubles me deeply is Molara's essentialisation of Africans. She mainly refers to Africans as a singular force and it makes it read more as a manifesto than a critical work. Although I understand her need to position herself as an African woman, it seems to border on creating a view of Africa that is just as totalising as colonial views. This undermines her argument in many ways, especially when compared to the issues between the "you" and the "we" in the poem she discusses.