Télécharger - Revue Palabres

50
Palabres, Revue d’Etudes Africaines, Vol. III, n°1, 2000.
being of women [...] ’STIWA’ is about the inclusion of African women in the
contemporary social and political transformation of Africa. I am sure there will be few
African men who will oppose the concept of including women in the social
transformation of Africa, which is really the issue. Women have to participate as copartners
in social transformation 73 .
As can be seen here, Ogundipe-Leslie’s central idea is that gender issues should play a
central role in all social restructuring. She thus indicates, considerably more explicitly
than Ogunyemi, that the gender relationships can be innovated only in the context of
basic social transformations. She as well thus argues in a much more complex way
than Walker and Hudson-Weems and most closely meets what Zoë Wicomb aims at.
Ogundipe-Leslie’s stiwanism, like Ogunyemi’s womanism, represents something
originally African: White as well as African-American women are - not explicitly, but
still by definition - excluded from stiwanism. Moreover, stiwanism, too, is
characterized by a demarcation from feminism. This, however, has less to do with a
personal antipathy to feminism than with the fact that feminism is met with such
vehement disapproval in Africa. By coining a new name Ogundipe-Leslie hopes «to
bypass the combative discourses that ensue whenever one raises the issue of feminism
in Africa». And she goes on:
The creation of the new word is to deflect energies from constantly having to respond to
charges of imitating Western feminism and, in this way, to avoid being distracted from
the real issue of the conditions of women in Africa [...] This new term describes my
agenda for women in Africa without having to answer charges of imitativeness or
having to constantly define our agenda on the African continent in relation to other
feminisms, in particular, white Euro-American feminisms which are unfortunately,
under siege by everyone 74
Ogundipe-Leslie does not make mention of whether men may be stiwanists. However,
the whole idea of her concept suggests that she proceeds from the necessity of a cooperation
of men and women. 75
Generally speaking, the main concern of the alternative concepts to feminism is to
found an autonomous anti-movement of black or, respectively, African women to
feminism that contextualizes the criticism of gender relationships. Apart from this
73 Ogundipe-Leslie 1994b: 229 - 230.
74 Ibid: 229 - 230.
75 Though Catherine Acholonu refers to her concept of Motherism as an « Afrocentric alternative to feminism »
(cf.: Acholonu 1995) it is not discussed here since ultimately it neither has nor wants anything to do with
feminist issues: The gender question plays neither an explicit nor an implicit role. For a detailed discussion of
Acholonu's motherism, cf: Arndt, Susan, African Women’s Literature, Orality and Intertextuality. Igbo Oral
Narratives as Nigerian Women Writers’ Models and Objects of Writing Back, Bayreuth, Bayreuth African
Studies, 1998, 338 - 340. Werewere Liking’s term « misovire », which she used in the course of an interview
with the journal Jeune Afrique, will be ignored here, too, as to date she did not theorize it in more detail. In the
interview she said: « Je suis une misovire [...] C’est misogyne [...] au féminin. » (Andriamirado, Sennen, « La
femme par qui le scandale arrive », in Jeune Afrique, 1172, June 22, 1983, 69.) Stating the reasons for this
position, she stressed that she considers men the adversary of all beautiful and pleasant things, unreliable and
unconvincing. Women, however, are reproached by her for enabling men to deal with them in a sexist way (cf.:
ibid).