RECONSIDERING ANAFEMALE BODIES IN AFRICAN SELF-WRITING
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22478/ufpb.1516-1536.2024v26n2.70983Keywords:
African feminism, Anafemale bodies, ColonialismAbstract
The ontological imperative of the black African anafemale body has been subjected to a wide range of literary investigation only recently. The traumatic triple threat of subjugation, exploitation, and exclusion (or possibly, displacement) of the body (the black, African, anafemale body) under the triad of race, class, and gender is at the front burner of feminist and indeed humanist discourses. From the lenses of Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí’s (1997) and Ifi Amadiume’s (2002) African feminist theoretical approaches, this paper offers a critical study into the nature of biological determinism in the understanding of the categories of sex and gender within the African milieu as a precursor for the conceptualisation of “the woman” under the (neo-)colonial hegemony of power. In doing so, this paper analyzes the anafemale body as a site of fluidity, dissidence, and transgression in Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater (2018), in opposition to the Eurocentric norms of gender.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Felipe Fanuel Xavier Rodrigues, Ifeanyi Gideon Nnadika
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
