The invention of women : making an African sense of Western gender discourses
Oyèrónḱẹ Oyěwùmí (Author)
"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 construction, 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."--Jacket
Print Book, English, 2014
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2014
History
xxiii, 229 pages ; 24 cm
9780816624416, 0816624410
1015486828
Ch. 1. Visualizing the Body: Western Theories and African Subjects
Ch. 2. (Re)constituting the Cosmology and Sociocultural Institutions of Oyo-Yoruba
Ch. 3. Making History, Creating Gender: The Invention of Men and Kings in the Writing of Oyo Oral Traditions
Ch. 4. Colonizing Bodies and Minds: Gender and Colonialism
Ch. 5. The Translation of Cultures: Engendering Yoruba Language, Orature, and World-Sense