The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses
The "woman question", this book asserts, is a Western one, and not a proper lens for viewing African society. A work that rethinks gender as a Western contruction, The Invention of Women offers a new way of understanding both Yoruban and Western cultures. Oyewumi traces the misapplication of Western, body-oriented concepts of gender through the history of gender discourses in Yoruba studies. Her analysis shows the paradoxical nature of two fundamental assumptions of feminist theory: that...
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The "woman question", this book asserts, is a Western one, and not a proper lens for viewing African society. A work that rethinks gender as a Western contruction, The Invention of Women offers a new way of understanding both Yoruban and Western cultures. Oyewumi traces the misapplication of Western, body-oriented concepts of gender through the history of gender discourses in Yoruba studies. Her analysis shows the paradoxical nature of two fundamental assumptions of feminist theory: that gender is socially constructed in old Yoruba society, and that social organization was determined by relative age.
PrefaceAcknowledgmentsA Note on OrthographyCh. 1Visualizing the Body: Western Theories and African Subjects1Ch. 2(Re)constituting the Cosmology and Sociocultural Institutions of Oyo-Yoruba31Ch. 3Making History, Creating Gender: The Invention of Men and Kings in the Writing of Oyo Oral Traditions80Ch. 4Colonizing Bodies and Minds: Gender and Colonialism121Ch. 5The Translation of Cultures: Engendering Yoruba Language, Orature, and World-Sense157Notes181Bibliography209Index223
