Social relations, cultural practices and identities are inevitably gendered. Feminist explorations of cultural processes can contribute enormously to understanding contemporary social dynamics. This panel will demonstrate the centrality of gender analysis to fields of inquiry such as: sexualities, performances of masculinities and feminitities, and gendered implications of ethnic, national and other identities.
Recent years have witnessed both a rise in the range of knowledge, theory and discourse dealing with gender as well as of critical explorations of gender relations and identities. While these concerns are obviously linked, the following panels single out these two central areas within African feminist research.
Embedded in an examination of Whiteness as a construction of colonial processes, the paper explores unspoken assumptions of Whiteness as 'neutral' or 'norm' in the context of White Western feminism and also how Whiteness is reflected on from the perspective of African feminists. In this connection I will discuss three African-feminist novels in which White women play a prominent role
The paper examines the way the dualism 'passive victim' vs. 'agent' operates in recent feminist writings on HIV and women in Africa. We are interested in how the feminist theorizations on victim positions, agency and subjectivity particularly in postcolonial feminist theory are translated when applied on concrete case studies on women and HIV.
African women activists and scholars, in addressing the experiences around sexuality of diverse categories of African women, have focused their energies on specific areas of thought and activism. This paper charts the scope of these efforts and reviews their implications for feminist politics.
Exploring the gendered dimensions of nationalism is key to understanding processes ranging from constructions of citizenship and identity to resource allocation and political participation. This paper contributes to existing feminist explorations of nationalism by examining some narratives and processes that discursively create "the nation" in Africa. My focus is on Zimbabwe and post-apartheid South Africa.
The face of HIV/AIDS is increasingly feminine in Africa. It is a contemporary apocalypse; a scourge 'more deadly than war'. Cultural factors shape the prevalence and this calls for a more inclusive cross-cutting mode of advocacy. Literature and orature, theory and empirical reseach combine to combat the pandemic.
Masked dance is often regarded as a men’s business. I will present fieldwork data showing that women in Malawi play an integral part in this identity forming dance ritual, that there can be no masked dance without women, and that women make and perform masks themselves in their own women’s rituals.
In matrilineal northern Mozambique, women’s capacities in terms of sex and cooking are held in high regard by women themselves, celebrated as female domains and areas of power. As seen by the Western gaze these female capacities have been cursed/demonized or naturalized and trivialized. Based on thinking from African and other feminist analysis, the paper presents a different reading.