Across Africa, mature women have for decades mobilized the power of their nakedness in political protest to shame and punish male adversaries. This insurrectionary nakedness, often called genital cursing, owes its cultural potency to the religious belief that spirits residing in women's bodies can be unleashed to cause misfortune in their targets, including impotence, disease, and death. In Naked Agency, Naminata Diabate analyzes these collective female naked protests in Africa and beyond to broaden understandings of agency and vulnerability. Drawing on myriad cultural texts from social media and film to journalism and fiction, Diabate uncovers how women create spaces of resistance during socio-political duress, including such events as the 2011 protests by Ivoirian women in COte d'Ivoire and Paris as well as women's disrobing in Soweto to prevent the destruction of their homes. Through the concept of naked agency, Diabate explores fluctuating narratives of power and victimhood to challenge simplistic accounts of African women's helplessness and to show how they exercise political power in the biopolitical era.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
"This is an expansive but nuanced and thought-provoking study of female nakedness as political intervention around Africa. Naked Agency offers a rich analysis of the many potential meanings of defiant disrobing as a signifying shorthand in relation to questions of agency within, but also potentially outside of an African context." - Moradewun Adejunmobi, coeditor of (Routledge Handbook of African Literature) "Bringing new insights to discussions of biopolitics and subjectivity, Naminata Diabate explores African women's naked protests to illuminate the contradictory nature of women's agency and the paradox of aggressive disrobing as a counter to globalization that depends on the globalized meaning of state power. She also makes a strong case for avoiding the problems found in most writings on African women of seeing women as either victims or heroic agents while doing an especially great job of exposing the double-edged nature of secularization in the postcolonial world." - E. Frances White, author of (Dark Continent of Our Bodies: Black Feminism and the Politics of Respectability) "Bold and erudite, Naked Agency analyses strategic skirt-lifting to shame, take revenge on or punish offensive men by exposing the vulva.... Naked Agency has made a profound impression on me." - Tobe Levin Von Gleichen (Canadian Journal of African Studies) "With a mixed method of textual analysis validated by ethnography, Naked Agency stands out among most scholarships that employ either one or the other, to arrive at a contextually nuanced epistemology. . . . I hope this book helps reconstruct and decolonize the mind of the West about the cultural practices of the other." - Oladoyin Abiona (Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry) "Naked Agency is a book that challenges censorship and manipulations of African modes of being, knowing, thinking, and theorizing about itself. . . . Naked Agency is what happens when scholars theorize and write from an Africa centered perspective." - Marame Gueye, Kenneth Harrow, Adeleke Ade?`k?? (Journal of the African Literature Association) "The strengths of Diabate's work rest not merely rest in her extensive review of theories of power but also in her ability to interweave multiple narratives. . . . Thought-provoking for students at any level." - Cathy Skidmore-Hess (Journal of Global South Studies) "[Naked Agency] is flawless, in its arguments, its language, and its clarity. . . . Although [Diabate's] book may seem to be targeted at academics, her conceptualization of agency is relevant to anyone trying to understand the dynamic aspect of agency and resistance in complex bio-political arenas in the world." - Supriya Joshi (Rural Sociology) "Naked Agency [is] extraordinarily capacious in its geographical, cultural, and generic scope. . . . By reading openly, the author is able to read across actors, sites, languages, cultures, genres, etc." - Chijioke K. Onah (Research in African Literature)
Reihe
Sprache
Verlagsort
Zielgruppe
Produkt-Hinweis
Illustrationen
Maße
Höhe: 240 mm
Breite: 162 mm
Dicke: 22 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-4780-0615-2 (9781478006152)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Naminata Diabate is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Cornell University.
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Exceptional Nakedness 1
Section I. Restriction
Scene 1. Exceptional Conditions and Darker Shades of Biopolitics 29
Scene 2. Dobsonville and the Question of Autonomy 43
Section II. Co-operation
Scene 3. Africanizing Nakedness as (Self-)Instrumentalization 65
Scene 4. In the Name of National Interest 89
Scene 5. Film as Instrumental and Interpretive Lens 107
Section III. Repression
Scene 6. Secularizing Genital Cursing and Rhetorical Backlash 131
Scene 7. Epistemic Ignorance and Menstrual Rags in Paris 149
Scene 8. Mis(Reading) Murderous Reactions 175
Epilogue: Defiant Disrobing Going Viral 191
Notes 197
References 219
Index 251
