The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses

256 Pages·1997·14.36 MB·English

by  Oyeronke Oyewumi

The Invention
of Women
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The Invention of Women
MAKING AN AFRICAN SENSE OF
WESTERN GENDER DISCOURSES
Oyeronke Oyewumi
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Copyright 1997 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval sys-
tem, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290, Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
Third Printing 2001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Oyewumi, Oyeronke.
The invention of women : making an African sense of western gender
discourses / Oyeronke Oyewumi.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8166-2440-2 (hc : alk. paper). - ISBN 0-8166-2441-0 (pb :
alk. paper)
1. Women, Yoruba - Social conditions. 2. Women, Yoruba - History.
3. Philosophy, Yoruba. 4. Sex role - Nigeria. 5. Sex differences -
Nigeria. 6. Body, Human - Social aspects - Nigeria. I. Title.
DT515.45.Y67094 1997
305.48'896333-dc21 97-36162
The University of Minnesota is an
equal-opportunity educator and employer.
For my children,
the source of life and its inspiration:
Olasiinbo
Akinboye
and
Mapate
Omolayo
Omolaso
Omgniyi
Omonide
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Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xix
A Note on Orthography xxiii
Chapter 1
Visualizing the Body: Western Theories and
African Subjects 1
Chapter 2
(Re)constituting the Cosmology and Sociocultural
Institutions of Qyo-Yoruba 31
Chapter 3
Making History, Creating Gender: The Invention of
Men and Kings in the Writing of Oyo Oral Traditions 80
Chapter 4
Colonizing Bodies and Minds: Gender and Colonialism 121
Chapter 5
The Translation of Cultures: Engendering Yoruba
Language, Orature, and World-Sense 157
Notes 181
Bibliography 209
Index 223
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Preface
THIS BOOK is about the epistemological shift occasioned by the(cid:10)(cid:13)
imposition of Western gender categories on Yoruba discourse.
Since there is a clear epistemological foundation to cultural
knowledge, the first task of the study is to understand the epistemo-
logical basis of both Yoruba and Western cultures. This endeavor is
best described as archaeological, in that it is concerned with revealing
the most basic but hidden assumptions, making explicit what has been
merely implicit, and unearthing the taken-for-granted assumptions un-
derlying research concepts and theories. Only when such assumptions
are exposed can they be debated and challenged.
This book is not about the so-called woman question. The woman
question is a Western-derived issue — a legacy of the age-old somato-
centricity in Western thought. It is an imported problem, and it is
not indigenous to the Yoruba. If it has become relevant in Yoruba
studies, the history of that process needs to be told. This study has be-
come part of that history. When I started the research, I believed that
it was possible for me to do a study on gender in a contemporary
Yoruba community that would primarily address the question from a
local perspective. It soon became clear to me that because of the aca-
demic practice of relying on disciplinary theories and conceptual debates
originating in and dominated by the West, many of the questions that in-
formed the initial research project were not (and could not be) generated
from local conditions. But I continued to believe that the problem could
be surmounted in the process.
As the work and my thinking progressed, I came to realize that the
fundamental category "woman" — which is foundational in Western
gender discourses — simply did not exist in Yorubaland prior to its
sustained contact with the West. There was no such preexisting group
characterized by shared interests, desires, or social position. The cultural
logic of Western social categories is based on an ideology of biologi-
cal determinism: the conception that biology provides the rationale for
the organization of the social world. Thus this cultural logic is actually
a "bio-logic." Social categories like "woman" are based on body-type
ix