Since the late 1980s, African literature has been moving away from the need to confront the West. Bill Ashcroft, Helen Tiffin, and Gareth Griffith suggested the term, âwrite backâ to designate the obsession of the literatures of the former colonized cultures with addressing themselves to the imperial canon.1 That obsession no longer dominates African writing; African writers increasingly engage the African world per se. Evan Mwangi captures this development in the aptly titled Africa Writes Back to Self, in which he discusses the issue of self-reflexivity in contemporary African writing and by women writers in particular.2 Recent scholarly works on African literature suggest that African literature has not always focused exclusively on meeting the gaze of the West; it has also been concerned with the self. For instance, in examining the phenomenon of pain in African literature, Zoe Norridge suggests that African literature is also a literature of the self.3 Brenda Cooperâs A New Generation of African Writers 4 investigates the concept of multiple belonging in a globalized world. Ranka Primoracâs The Place of Tears: The Novel and Politics in Modern Zimbabwe considers the degree to which Zimbabwean novels address the Zimbabwean condition.5 Also of importance is Ken Harrowâs Less than One and Double: A Feminist Reading of African Womenâs Writing. 6
The move away from the âwrite backâ ideology asserted itself most vigorously in the new millennium, especially among a group of women writers who secured their positions in African letters between 2000 and 2013 and who have been designated as third-generation writers, that is those who were born in the 1960s and 1970s, and who rose to prominence in the new millennium. Among them are Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sefi Atta, Doreen Baingana, Chika Unigwe, Lola Shoneyin, Petina Gappah, Chinelo Okparanta, NoViolet Bulawayo, Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, Nnedi Okorafor, and Warsan Shire.7 These writers are more interested in exploring the human condition in their local spheres than in addressing the world from the perspective of the colonized and oppressed. Whereas earlier generations of African writers presented Africa to the world by countering colonial Manichean allegories, these contemporary African writers raise questions of immediate ethical relevance: Who and what are Africans to one another? What exactly does one African body mean to another African body?
Since these women write back to self, it is appropriate that they begin with their bodies. They do so in the belief that to be is to be a body. They confront African gender politics and the appalling human rights condition of women, but they do so without the radicalism of certain factions within the feminist movement in the West or of late twentieth-century African alternatives. Rather, having learned from the missteps of both, they make a simple demand from their societies in regard to the relations between men and women; they demand fairness and recognition.
Zoe Norridge states that there is âhesitancy among academics to address questions of pain in African literatureâ because of the fear of confirming negative stereotypes about Africa.8 She also argues that âthe literary aestheticisation of stories transforms pain into more than a âmemory,â a âwoundâ or a âtheory,â instead lending to hurt the immediacy and poignancy of the present.â I agree with her idea that âpain is often either a result or a cause of the denial of another personâs voice,â and I interpret her assertions in ethical terms: (needless) pain is an instance of human rights abuse.9 I argue that African women writers tell stories of bodies of women in pain primarily to establish their subjectivities in a world that is predominantly controlled by peopleâs uses of abstractions such as heritage, culture, tradition, and religion as justifications for their actions and relations to others.10 Through a close reading of selected texts, I examine how these writers seek to answer the question of who or what women are, and I invite a reassessment of the conditions of gender relations and human rights in Africa.
African Feminism: Old Wine in a New Wine Bottle?
In the preface, I explained that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and many women writers of her generation have revived interest in feminism by drawing attention to the bodies of women in pain. I work with Susan Moller Okinâs definition of feminism, which is âthe belief that women should not be disadvantaged by their sex, that they should be recognized as having human dignity equally with men, and the opportunity to live as fulfilling and as freely chosen lives as men can.â11 As far as this definition goes, the different generations of African women writers and activists pursue the same goal. The obvious difference between third-generation African women writers and their foremothers is the formersâ bold embrace of feminist identity.12 Whereas, for instance, Buchi Emecheta claimed that she was a feminist with a small âfâ, Adichie declares herself to be a happy feminist.13 Susan Z. Andrade has rightly argued that Adichie and others of her generation are indebted to Emecheta, Flora Nwapa, and Mariama BĂą, among others.14 Unlike the Nwapa-Emecheta generation that was much concerned with the nation as a construct that must be defended against the onslaught of the West, third-generation African women writers are less occupied with concepts of the nation as a space.15 They are more interested in the womanâs body as a violated entity.16 They see their bodies not as symbols or allegories of something else, but rather as homes to their individual selves. This is the dominant idea that runs through the works of these authors. When they write about polygamy, female genital excision, rape, spousal abuse, or other forms of gender discrimination, they do so because they are acutely aware of these bodies as exclusively theirs, not as belonging to society or their culture. They therefore contest the physical and psychological pain inflicted on them. Most importantly, they draw attention to fundamental ethical questions, one of which is the relation between the African man and the African woman. The contemporary African woman writer therefore understands her feminism to be an ethical statement; it involves people relating to people as individuals and not merely as members of groups.
Ethics, broadly defined, is a science of morality.17 Morality, in turn, deals with what is good or bad, permissible or forbidden. Whereas morality might be personal, ethics is always about the quality of oneâs relations with others.18 Ethics defines right or wrong ways of being or relating to others.19 Ethics as relationship is intrinsically a recognition of the other. For Judith Butler, the story of how we arrive at the recognition of the other is as important as that recognition itself, for it is the genealogy of the recognition that gives it its ethical character. Underlining the structure of morality as a quality generated among people, she states in an interview that pursuing a moral mode of being is not âsomething that is exclusively âmineâ and so will have to be a mode of being that is bound up with others with all the difficulty and promise that implies.â20 She uses Adriana Cavareroâs idea of recognition; for Cavarero the ultimate question central to recognition of the other is: âWho are you?â Butler interprets Cavarero as suggesting that the subject encounters the other as already essentially âexposed, visible,â and as âexisting in a bodily way and of necessity in a domain of appearance.â This bodily existence is what constitutes the individualâs sense of own life and because this corporeality is exposed âit is not that over which I can have control.â21
Butlerâs interpretation echoes Alasdair MacIntyreâs in Dependent Rational Animals.22 As embodied beings, we are vulnerable, exposed, and therefore are dependent on others, that is, we rely on them for recognition. In Butlerâs understanding, the recognition of the other takes the singularity and vulnerability of oneself and the other into consideration; this includes the fact that recognition is not an event fixed in time. It is a continuous process that is best captured in the question: âWho are you?â Butler argues that the ethical stance consists in asking that question:
without any expectation of a full or fi...