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44
Palabres, Revue d’Etudes Africaines, Vol. III, n°1, 2000.
She even admits that like radical feminism, womanism is «finally separatist - the one
sexually, the other racially - and their different goals create part of the disunity in the
women’s movement.» 41 Relating to this position and citing Ogunyemi's view that
«African and Afro-American women writers [...] are distinct from white feminists
because of their race», the South African scholar Jenny de Reuck concludes that
«[w]omanism exists within an explicitly racist construction of the subject» 42 . To label
womanism racist is very problematic in many respects. Even more so, since de Reuck
quotes Ogunyemi incompletely and out of context, thus violating its actual concern. In
fact, Ogunyemi writes:
As a group, they [black women writers; S.A.] are distinct from the white feminism
because of their race, because they have experienced the past and present subjugation of
the black population along with present-day subtle (or not subtle) control exercised over
them by the alien, Western culture. 43
Hence, Ogunyemi argues that African-American and African women experienced
racial discrimination, socio-economic oppression and cultural imperialism from
Western societies and that the political, cultural and socio-economic experiences of
black/African women as social group (and this is important to stress) differ from those
of white women. This attitude is by no means racist. In fact, Ogunyemi neither
assumes white women's inferiority nor does she oppress or discriminate against them.
All she does is to describe and analyze existing social phenomena and to conclude
from it that it is necessary to organize in exclusion of white women. In her reading of
the anti-feminist separatism of womanism Tuzyline Jita Allan from Sierra Leone
argues that it is a reaction to feminism’s cultural imperialism and refusal to consider
ethnically-determined cultural differences. 44 She concludes: «Where differences were
ignored, they are now exaggerated, a concrete indication of the refusal to meet the
racial Other on equal terms.» 45
In Africa Wo/Man Palava Ogunyemi subscribes to these thoughts, yet
simultaneously gives them a new dimension when she says: «Since feminism and
African-American womanism overlook African peculiarities, there is a need to define
African womanism.» 46 She continues: «It is necessary to reiterate that the womanist
praxis in Africa has never totally identified with all the original Walkerian precepts.
An important point of departure is the African obsession to have children [...]» 47 In
addition to that, while Walker emphasizes that womanists love other women -
«sexually and/or nonsexually», 48 Ogunyemi argues that her womanism rejects lesbian
41
Ogunyemi 1985/86: 71.
42
Reuck, Jenny de, « Writing Feminism/Theoretical Inscriptions in South Africa», in M.J. Daymond (ed.), South
African Feminisms. Writing, Theory, and Criticism 1990 - 1994, New York and London, Garland Publishing,
Inc., 1996, 39.
43
Ogunyemi 1985/86: 64.
44
Allan, Tuzyline Jita, Womanist and Feminist Aesthetics. A Comparative Review, Athens, Ohio University
Press, 1995, 118 - 119.
45
Ibid: 120.
46
Ogunyemi 1996: 114, emphasis mine. Though she speaks of African feminism here, as a rule she stays with
the more general term womanism, having, however, its African orientation in mind.
47
Ibid: 133.
48
Walker 1983: XI.