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Listening to Africa, misunderstanding and misinterpreting Africa: reformist western feminist evangelism on African women

Is objective analysis on gender issues in Africa possible?

Authors: Okome, M. O.
Publisher: African Studies Association

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This paper questions why the western cultural hegemony persists in scholarship and academia. It asks, is objective analysis of gender issues possible? Is possible for western scholars to listen to and understand the differing needs of women in Africa?

Answering these questions is facilitated by applying Mudimbe's critique of missionary discourse on Africans to feminist scholarship on African women. The author argues that it is inevitable that the forms and the expressions taken by women's struggles in each African society will differ from the other, and that these struggles will not replicate the experience of Western women. The thrust of the argument is that African women, like any other group, are able to articulate their needs, evaluate the alternative courses of action, and mobilise for collective action where necessary. Sometimes they have even successfully changed the course of history. If the objectives and policy preferences of women are not studied as part of a dialectical historical process, feminist scholarship will forever left with the sense of unidimensionality, and all avenues to the production of new knowledge will be blocked. The complexity which exists in real- life situations, an essential component of any human situation or condition, will go unrecognised.

The paper concludes that western hegemony in scholarship and in the academy still reign unchallenged. Most other parts of the world thus far, only respond to it. Until the hegemonic stranglehold of the west on other parts of the world is torn out, root and branch, we will continue to misunderstand and misinterpret Africa in the Western academy. The challenge for African scholars is to challenge and destroy hegemonic rule that pervades much seemingly selfless and sympathetic research conducted by those whose aim is to help they who cannot help themselves. To rise to the challenge, we must plumb the depths of African societies to create a body of work that responds to the needs of Africa and Africans.

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