Thomas, Lynn M.  Politics of the womb : women, reproduction, and the state in Kenya.  Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003.

Chapter three of Lynn Thomas’s book Politics of the womb: women, reproduction, and the state in Kenya talks about the ban on female excision (female genital cutting, a cultural and religious tradition in many African people groups) in Kenya from 1956-1959.  The ban resulted in a significant backlash, not from indigenous men in positions of leadership, but rather from young indigenous women.  Girls organized excisions on their own, as it was firmly believed that the coming-of-age ritual was necessary to live morally and even birth healthy children.  However, the girls didn’t follow all of the rituals, celebrations and formats of the traditional excision ceremony, which resulted in the older generation of women criticizing, and even not recognizing the excisions as legitimate.  Interestingly, this marked a significant shift in women’s mentality in Kenya.  The new generation of women represented a hybrid between rebellion against authority (both colonial and traditional), and preservation of tradition.

This article relates to the film Xala, and specifically to my thesis, in the way that demonstrates how one people group navigated the friction between traditionalism and modernism.  While the girls from this time period rejected the imposition of colonial modernism, they nonetheless diverged from complete traditionalism as well.  This generation even stood in rebellion to their maternal elders, who insisted upon the most “traditional” and thorough rituals associated with female excision.  The character and actions of Rama in Sembène’s film run parallel to the Kenyan girls’ attitude.

Okom, Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké.  “African Women and Power: Reflections on the Perils of Unwarranted Cosmopolitanism.”  Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies 1:1.

This article explores African women’s positions of power in the pre and post-colonial eras.  The author first argues that it is incorrect to describe pre-colonial African women’s roles as “traditional,” as they had been steadily changing for centuries.  Not only that, but they varied dramatically from people group to people group.  The author focuses on one particular people group, the Yorùbá of Southern Nigeria, to demonstrate the rights and power exercised by women in the capacities of mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, political officials, owners of capital, monarchs, deities and religious leaders.  The author shows how women’s anatomical role as child-bearers was a position of honor in pre-colonial Africa.  Of particular interest was the rigid power structure within each clan of the Yorùbá people group.  Women belonging to the clan actually had authority over men that chose to marry into the clan.  Although the clan still operated as a patrimony, being a clan insider trumped sex.

As it relates to Xala, this article gives several real examples of how women in Africa can and do exercise power.  In Xala, we saw this in the way El Hadji’s first wife explicitly pointed out her superiority to the second and third wives both to her husband and to the other wives.  She could essentially hold her husband’s treatment of the second and third wives in check, and demand respect and submission from the other wives.  The author would also argue that many cultural “traditions” claimed by the males in the film were actually much less traditional than they claimed when one examines Africa’s history, which is very interesting.

Boris, Eileen.  “Gender After Africa!”  Africa After Gender.  Ed. Catherine M. Cole, Takyiwaa Manuh, and Stephan F. Miescher.  Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, 2007.  191-204.

Eileen Boris opens her essay by turning a common question asked by Western gender academics on its head. Instead of asking “What impact has gender as a category of analysis had on the study of Africa,” which in itself assumes Western thinkers have already arrived at a correct framework for studying gender, the author argues that a much more appropriate question is “What can Africa do for gender?” She explains how Western gender theorists have, until recently, incorrectly proposed their own historical gender tradition to be universal. Instead, historical African social and gender structures need to be used to enlarge the framework for academic gender theory. Additionally, she explores the similarities and differences between gender and other social attributes such as age, lineage, kinship and wealth for determining social status. Finally, she shows how African gender is a source of power in post-colonial political struggles.

In many ways, this article reveals the Western bias in my original thesis for this research project (I actually still retained the same thesis, as it is a case in point for Eileen Boris’s and many other African gender scholars). My thesis assumes that gender and feminism thought in Africa need a Western savior-that African women have to find a balance between their “primitive” gender tradition and the “correct” or “modern” Western ideas of gender and liberation. It also makes me wonder what opinions about gender roles director Ousmane Sembène might have had in mind when he released Xala. Most of the Western analysis of the film describe women in the film as “masculine,” and the men as “feminine,” but Boris’s article suggests such reviews assume Western gender stereotypes are universal. Did Sembène have this in mind as well?