Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí

Dzieła

• 1997The Invention of Women (Wynalezienie kobiet)

  Oyěwùmí dowodzi, że w społeczeństwie joruba życie społeczne organizowało starszeństwo, a nie płeć, i że „kobieta” jako kategoria przyszła wraz z kolonializmem i zachodnią nauką – teza bardzo dyskutowana.

Stanowisko

In “The Invention of Women” Oyěwùmí argues that pre-colonial Yoruba society was organised mainly by seniority – relative age – rather than gender. Yoruba pronouns and kinship terms do not mark sex, and social roles were not tied to anatomy. Western thought, by contrast, practises “body-reasoning”: it reads social position from the visible body. Colonial rule and Western scholarship, feminist scholarship included, imposed this logic and created “woman” as a subordinated category. She calls instead for concepts drawn from African ways of life. Her thesis shaped decolonial feminism, including María Lugones’ idea of the coloniality of gender, but is disputed: Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, among others, criticised her readings of language and historical evidence.

Życie i kontekst

Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí is a Nigerian sociologist of Yoruba background. She studied at the University of Ibadan and earned her doctorate in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She has taught for many years at Stony Brook University in New York, working on gender, African societies and the sociology of knowledge, and has edited volumes on African women and gender studies.

Dalsze główne dzieła

• African Women and Feminism (ed., 2003)
• African Gender Studies: A Reader (ed., 2005)
• What Gender Is Motherhood? (2016)

Pojawia się w

• Podróż „Filozofia afrykańska” · Przystanek 10 z 10
• Debata „Dekolonizacja myśli”