Rearticulations of the «feminine» in African Indigenous Religions and border thinking

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to rethink femininity, and the very concept of gender, in relation to African onto-epistemologies in which the presence of the spiritual or sacred plays a fundamental role in the construction of personal and social identities. Drawing on decolonial perspectives, my text explores the work of four African women writers (Flora Nwapa, Yvonne Vera, Nkunzi Zandile Nkabinde and Akwaeke Emezi) whose protagonists subvert and transcend the hegemonic and Eurocentric idea of the «feminine», while revealing a discursive continuum in which traditional reverence for the «sacred feminine principle» is articulated through culturally specific manifestations. Nevertheless, it is necessary to point out that the four works under study largely transcend the dichotomies between tradition and modernity, engaging in an extraordinarily productive dialogue with Western feminist and queer discourses, generating a border thinking which may shed light on possibilities of being beyond modern and colonial prescriptions of the «human».