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

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Overview

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 ...
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More About This Book

Overview

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.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780816624416
  • Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
  • Publication date: 10/28/1997
  • Pages: 240
  • Sales rank: 802,592
  • Product dimensions: 5.88 (w) x 9.00 (h) x 0.60 (d)

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
A Note on Orthography
Ch. 1 Visualizing the Body: Western Theories and African Subjects 1
Ch. 2 (Re)constituting the Cosmology and Sociocultural Institutions of Oyo-Yoruba 31
Ch. 3 Making History, Creating Gender: The Invention of Men and Kings in the Writing of Oyo Oral Traditions 80
Ch. 4 Colonizing Bodies and Minds: Gender and Colonialism 121
Ch. 5 The Translation of Cultures: Engendering Yoruba Language, Orature, and World-Sense 157
Notes 181
Bibliography 209
Index 223
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