Thursday, March 27, 1997

Cultural feminism compared

By DANIELLE CHIARA
Collegian Staff Writer

Western civilization will not be embarking on a voyage to a nongendered Utopia any time soon. But yesterday afternoon, Nigerian scholar and author, Oyerornke Oyewumi, said in the Yoruban culture, this destination has been attained.

In a lecture titled, "Feminism and African Gender Formation," Oyewumi discussed gender formation and bridges between Western and Yoruban feminism with a mixed audience of University faculty and students.

"Her lecture really opened my eyes to African feminism and caused me to question Western feminism," said Christina Hellmann (freshman-economics). "She combined true history of a nongendered society, Yoruba."

Feminism is cross-cultural -- part of Western culture and structured by debates that lie within itself, Oyewumi said. For example, feminism mainstreams the dominant, white, middle-class woman and is exclusionary to all other perspectives of women like the African American and international woman.

"There is an idea in the West that the best way to explain society is based on biology, colors of skin and gender," she said.

Gender is biologically determined on the basis of identity and birthplace, she said. The body is central to the way Western society is organized. Sheer physicality is essential to social categories, Oyewumi said. Appearance establishes beliefs and social position.

Nigerian scholar, Oyeromke Oyewumi, delivers a lecture discussing "Feminism and African Gender Formation" yesterday at the Paul Robeson Cultural Center. (Collegian Photo / Timothy Gyves)

"Society is constituted by bodies -- white bodies, black bodies, male bodies, female bodies," she said. "The body becomes a text and a bedrock on which social order is founded. It invites the gaze of difference."

In the West, society tries to escape and demystify this biological determinism, she said, but it keeps rearing its head. Women are excluded from the category of citizen because of their bodies. The body-central narrative of the West is the culprit of hierarchy and patriarchy. The way society is constructed explains why women are disadvantaged and imagined as a powerless, victimized gender, Oyewumi said.

Oyewumi's Yoruban culture is gender blind. Language, an important institution of feminist theory, differs in Western and Yoruban civilization, she said. In the West, language decenters or excludes women, but Yoruban language is not gender- specific. In addition, the division of labor and concept of monarchy is not gender- oriented.

African societies look at gender, she said, and disregard preconceived notions. However, the Western world may be exporting their biases and attempting to erase other cultures like Yoruba.

"Let African societies speak, come out and be theoretical for Western formulation," Oyewumi said.