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- Convenor:
-
Omotayo Oloruntoba-Oju
(Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko, Nigeria)
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- Discussant:
-
Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju
(University of Ilorin)
- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- KH116
- Start time:
- 30 June, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Zurich
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
The panel invites discussions of paradigms that demonstrate how rural and urban spaces impact on sexuality and sexual practices in Africa, and how this impact is differentiated between different genders, different sexualities, classes and trans-border spaces.
Long Abstract:
Sexuality is one of the areas in which rural-urban dichotomies are perceived as deep and invariable. To start with, sexuality is generally seen as being culturally mediated in rural areas, with an associated sense of nobility and restraint, but socially mediated in urban areas with a sense of relative moral indifference or lack of moral stricture. In other words, urbanity is associated with negative values in the department of sexuality and sexual practices,while rurality is represented as positively idyllic.
These dichotomies are not just value-laden but are in many cases gendered and hierarchical. For example, the 'push-pull' factor in rural-urban migration is generally seen as gendered - sexual migration is almost always regarded as a female phenomenon, not just in terms of transactional sexual exchange, but in terms of power and amplified sexual agency. Similarly, sexual practices perceived as being enhanced by urbanity are almost always defined in female, and negative, terms - e.g. prostitution, transactional sex, 'duplicitous sexuality,' 'unbridled sexuality,' etc. At another level, female urban sexual gaze may be contrasted with male rural gaze (e.g. the search for virgins).
Just how mistaken, or otherwise, are these rural-urban sexuality stereotypes with respect to Africa? The panel invites discussions of the multiple paradigms that demonstrate how rural and urban spaces impact on sexuality and sexual practices in Africa, and how this impact is differentiated between different genders, different sexualities, classes and trans-border spaces. The representation of these paradigms in literature and culture is of particular interest to the panel.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Oliver Wandera (Laikipia University)
Paper short abstract:
new shape of social and economic cohesion emerging in Africa now must be understood within the context of the consumer culture and trends moderated by technology based on commodities rather than physical ventures.
Paper long abstract:
The youth sexual relationships in urban Africa are being socially constructed as an appropriate expression of intimacy, but also as a statement about a particular kind of modern identity. Kenya burgeoning commercial and the public sector have been embraced by global changes and today have reached the highest point of capitalism and has became a preserve or marketplace of sexual information, enticing eager audiences with expert radio programs, newspaper gossip columns, foreign romance novels.
Western pornographic films and bikini-clad cover girls staring the soap operas on television and smuggled DVDs tend to expand the sexual marketplace which in turn serves to further codify the category of youth, as development agents and commercial advertisement seek to appeal and to shape its young audience. I argue that the new shape of social and economic cohesion emerging in Africa now must be understood within the context of the consumer culture and trends moderated by technology based on commodities rather than physical ventures.
By reviewing literature from multiple works, this paper intends to delve into what it means to be male and female in modern Kenyan contexts; assess different ways in which sexualities have been constructed, performed, and resisted by the youth.
Ifeyinwa Okolo (Federal University Lokoja)
Paper short abstract:
Men and women are equally victims of sexual violence in the case where one witnesses a spouse’s rape. Victimhood is not the prerogative of the physically violated; psychological violation of the witness also counts. The environment – rural or urban – is key in determining coping strategies.
Paper long abstract:
Often times, the discussion of rape and other forms of sexual violence privileges women as victims to the negligence of men who, though may suffer sexual violence primarily or secondarily, are usually only seen as perpetrators. This work by psychoanalyzing the characters in the film, Femi Kayode's Tango with Me, establishes that men are also victims of rape. Produced and directed by Mahmood Ali-Balogun, the film explores the trauma of being raped, watching one's spouse raped and the difficulty of accepting the resultant pregnancy. Even though the wife receives the physical impact/violence, the husband is seen as an equal victim of the rape. The man and woman experience differing degrees of trauma requiring different coping strategies ranging from psychotherapy/professional counselling to validation of manhood, support from loved ones, personal resolve to accept self, and recourse to faith in a higher power. Much of the difficulty experienced by the couple arises from society's disposition to rape: the culture of silence and stigmatization of victims. Though set in the city, the characters' behavioural traits and reactions to rape are more rural than urban, even while they reach out for urban remedies. Also, traditional gender roles, a carryover from rural consciousness, account for the recovery rate in the male and female victims: the sustained perception of females as victims has psychologically conditioned them to recover faster than their male counterparts from the trauma of rape. The rural and urban spaces each provide elements that both make and mar the couple's journey to recovery.
Cristina Cruz-Gutiérrez (University of the Balearic Islands)
Paper short abstract:
The paper reads Nicole Amarteifio’s characters in the web series An African City as rebranding the concept of morality, disentangling it from sexual chastity, and challenging (re)presentations of women in urban contexts having a flawed sense of morality.
Paper long abstract:
This paper aims to explore Nicole Amarteifio's web series An African City (2014-present) delving into the politics of self-empowerment and sexual agency. An African City offers a rich and multifaceted insight into the lives of five female returnees re-discovering themselves and seeking professional success as they find their way in the modern lifestyle of Accra, a city represented both as dominated by patriarchal morals and as a cosmopolitan place with business opportunities for young entrepreneurs. I propose to analyze An African City in terms of rejecting rigid patterns of representation and (de)moralization of African women in urban contexts, for its characters resist categorizations into unique or essentialized forms of identity. Thus, I study Amarteifio's characters in terms of their embodying independence, sexual liberation, and personal aspirations beyond being mothers and wives.
The focus will be on the characters' conception of the self, for each woman reveals different social concerns as well as different strategies for effective self-assertion and self-definition. As independent intelligent business women each of them faces and embraces sexuality from a different standpoint, questioning the concept of morality and disentangling it from sexual chastity as they adopt different perspectives in what regards body politics. The characters' multifaceted approaches towards sexual agency marks them as metonymic representations of different modes of femaleness in Africa. In this sense, An African City also reveals itself as a polyphonic narrative displaying different social responses towards women's claiming ownership of their body and the renegotiation of the concept of morality.
Abísọlá Akínsíkù (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville)
Paper short abstract:
This study explores the psychological complexities that take place in the planes of the mind, and how rural-urban fuse make different shades of women and wives. To achieve this, urban and rural women stereotypes are traced in African literature as two selected Nigerian novels are analyzed.
Paper long abstract:
The rural and the urban have been overtly entwined, with one serving as 'the other side of the coin' in many situations, however, the space that once delineate the urban and rural is beginning to fade, because even in the urban, rural life can be put to play just as the urban life creeps into rural scape. The complex nature of the rural-urban life in Africa has raised more questions in delineating the rural woman or wife and her urban counterpart, because of the consistent fading of the mind's borderline.
It is in the light of this that this research (re)examines and questions the paradigm of urban-rural sexual stereotypes. How selected Nigerian women writers present this phenomenon is considered. Therefore, the psychological mingling of the rural and urban in the human mind is the focus of this study. This study does not only interrogate the stereotypes, it demonstrates otherwise the irony that is displayed by the different genders in their changing spaces. Further, the psychological complexities that take place in the mind, and how rural-urban fuse make different shades of women and wives is studied.
To achieve this, urban and rural women stereotypes are traced two Nigerian female authored novels by Lola Shoneyin and Chika Unigwe. As both texts are closely read, special attention is given to the representations of the rural woman and the urban in The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives and Midnight Dancer respectively. A critical textual analysis is used.
Kimingichi Wabende (University of Nairobi)
Paper short abstract:
The paper therefore examines the performance of the traditional circumcision ritual in western Kenya and Kenyan hip hop, to evaluate how shifting spaces and cultural dynamics have affected masculinity.
Paper long abstract:
Gender Construction and Diminishing Masculinity
Masculinity in the African Traditional Society is constructed through circumcision ritual which provides a stage for a transition from childhood to adulthood. This ceremony, in addition to traditional narratives, defines what and how masculinity is constructed. It equally provides space in which those going through the ritual of becoming 'men,' to demonstrate their masculinity. This paper examines how, with diminishing spread and influence of traditional circumcision ritual and rural urban migration, there is resultant diminishing masculinity and emerging search and assertion of the same through new medium. It will explore how in the absence of spaces to display and demonstrate masculinity, the urban hip hop genre is a new platform for performing masculinity. The paper therefore relies on the performance of the traditional circumcision ritual in western Kenya and Kenyan hip hop, to evaluate how shifting spaces and cultural dynamics have affected masculinity.