Oyèrónké Oyewùmí, ed. African Gender Studies. A Reader. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
1 With the performative turn's emphasis on the discursive construction of gender categories, a growing awareness has emerged within the interdisciplinary field of gender studies that "insistence on coherence and unity of the category [woman, SA] refuse[s] the multiplicity of cultural, social and political intersections in which the concrete array of 'women' are constructed" (Butler 1990: 14). Hence, the project of countering the internal structure of white hegemony in the field of gender studies - although well under way for considerable time - has gained added momentum and amplified scope. One of its latest additions is Oyèrónké Oyewùmí's anthology African Gender Studies. A Reader (2005). Bringing together a wide range of voices and disciplinary perspectives of African scholars, the collection interrogates some well-established concepts and ideas of (Western) gender studies so as to "correct the longstanding problem of Western dominance in the interpretation of African realities" (xiv) and to re-define "gender" as an analytical tool applicable to African contexts.
2 On a critical note, however, the editor seems to establish a dichotomy between two homogeneous cultural spheres in her brief but lucid preface: Africa and the West. While at least the former's uniformity is clearly deconstructed as the anthology's contributions cover a wide range of cultural contexts, it still comes as a surprise that the homogeneity of the "West" and "Western" gender studies respectively remains largely uncontested, especially when considering that all but five of twenty-two contributors are African scholars in the diaspora, holding positions in the U.S. academia. Hence, although this anthology is primarily concerned with portraying thoroughly African perspectives within the vast field of gender studies, these perspectives themselves are located at the interface of "Africa" and the "West."
3 The anthology is divided into seven thematic sections and twenty-one chapters. Each of the sections is briefly introduced by a concise sketch of its thematic outline and a short summary of each of the following contributions. As the editor thus deliberately lets the texts speak for themselves critical conversations may emerge first and foremost within the sections but are intended to subsequently reach beyond these confines. Against this backdrop, this review will explore how the juxtaposition of the texts compiled in this anthology as well as their different disciplinary approaches - ranging from the social sciences to literary theory - ultimately culminates in a patchwork picture of African gender studies.
4 In the first section, "Transcending the Body of Knowledge", Oyewùmí's opening essay resumes the preface's assessment of Western gender categories as deeply entrenched in the "bio-logic" (xviii) of Western culture. The author's - perhaps not too unexpected - perception that social roles in Western culture are intrinsically determined by the body flies in the face of the aforementioned performative turn's emphasis on the perpetual (re)construction of, for instance, gender roles within and beyond existing social norms. In contrast to this perception of an underlying 'bio-logic' of social roles in Western culture social roles in Yoruba culture are depicted as inherently circumstantial and relational, and therefore not only as entirely free of any biological influence, but also of gendered restrictions. Yet, again quite contrarily, Akyeampong and Obeng's study on the development of power and authority in the Asante nation reveals that it was precisely their bodies that have effectively come to exclude women from hitherto unlimited access to positions of power: it is women's menstruation that keeps them from powerful positions in this society before they eventually become "ritual men" (30) - and hence eligible for positions of power - after menopause. Accordingly, these contributions outline a critical dialogue on the subject of gendered bodies. Nevertheless, one significant gap in both essays remains the lack of consideration for any colonial influence on the significance of "gender" in the two societies.
5 The second section, "Decolonizing Femininism", explores the relationship between feminism and colonialism and emphasizes the different experiences of feminism and feminist ideologies for women in the West and women in former colonies as either a liberating ideology or an extension of white supremacy rule. Nnaemeka's contribution focuses on the (im)possibility of achieving global sisterhood in the light of the specific) construction, teaching and dissemination of knowledge about the - simultaneously raced and gendered - Other. Lazreg, on the other hand, openly advocates a non-reductive, all-inclusive femininity based on the acknowledgment of a common humanity at the center of womanhood, which transcends both cultures and races, and ultimately fosters a new consciousness of an inherently decentered, "transindividual" (78) subject. Both essays convincingly argue that the project of "decolonizing feminism" entails the subject's understanding of his or her own stance towards the other(ed) culture.