“Sexing African Time and Space”: The Fetish of the Colonial Gender
Keywords:
Neo-colonialism, Sexed Time and Space, Colonial Gender
Abstract
This article examines how Alain Mabanckou uses sexual allegories in his novel Broken glass (2010) to express (neo)-colonial realities in which Africa is charmed by the West into assuming the role of the sexual subaltern. Mabanckou appears to reinvigorate the sexual allegories of rape and prostitution for expressing the penetrative tendencies of colonialism by affixing their connotations of exploitation to the harsh socio-economic and political realities of (neo)-colonialism, thus creating a motif which is termed in the article as the fetish of colonial gender. Its coalescent value might be of great interest in postcolonial studies since it reveals how neocolonialists ascribe the subaltern’s time and space with exploitable sex through the charm of the global economy. The critical discussion is built on textual research methods and it highlights on the fabric that holds the neo-colonial relationship between the West and Africa.References
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25. Uchendu, E., 2008. Are African Males Men? Sketching African Masculinities in Contemporary Africa. s.l.:University of Nigeria.
26. Vallier, D., 1970. Abstract Art. New York: The Orion Press.
2. Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G. & Tiffin, H., 1995. The Postcolonial Studies Reader. London: s.n.
3. Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G. & Tiffin, H., 2007. Post-colonial Studies: The Key Concepts, Second Edition.. New York: s.n.
4. Barthes, R., 1991. Myth Today. In: P. A. Moody, ed. Readings in Textual Studies. Massachusetts: Copley Publishing Group, pp. 74-108.
5. Bosteels, B. & Ciccarieollo-Maher, G. eds., 2017. Decolonizing Dialectics. Durban: Duke University Press.
6. Chilala, C., 2019. Anglophone Zambian Prose Fiction: Tradition or Transition?. Hybrid Journal Literary and Cultural Studies, pp. 13-29.
7. Cowan, B., Guidotti-Hernandez, N. & Ruiz, J. eds., 2015. Sexing the Empire. Radical History Review. Issue 123, pp. 1-8.
8. Djebar, A., 1993. Fantasia, an Algerian Calvacade. Portsmouth: Heinemann.
9. Donham, D. L., 2018. The Concept of the Fetish. In: The Erotic of History. s.l.:University of California, pp. 28-32.
10. Fanon, F., 1986. Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto Press.
11. Hayes, J., 2000. A Man is Being Raped: Nouri Bouzid's Man of Ashes and the Deconstruction of Sexual Allegories of Colonilaism. In: M. N. Eke, K. W. Harrow & E. Yewah, eds. African Images: Recent Studies and Text in Cinema. No. 8. Asmara: Africa World Press, Inc., pp. 73-88.
12. Jung, C. G. ed., 1964. Man and his Symbols. New York: Doubleday.
13. Kalsson, J., n.d. Alice's Vacillation between Childhood and Adolescence in Lewis Caroll's Alice's Adeventures in Wonderland. s.l.:Karstads Universitet.
14. Kufakurinani, U., Kvangraven, I. H., Santana, F. & Styre, M. D. eds., 2017. Dialogues on Development, Vol. 1: on Dependency. s.l.:s.n.
15. Mabanckou, A., 2010. Broken Glass. New York: Soft Skull.
16. Marx, K., 1976. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Vol. 1.. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
17. McKay, K. et al., 2014. Fairytales, Folklore and Femininity: Making sense of the (Un)sexed Female Body Across Time and Space. In: L. Maclean, L. Stafford & M. Weeks, eds. Exploring Bodies in Time and Space. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, pp. 14-26.
18. Nkrumah, K., 1965. Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. London: Penaf.
19. Penrose, R., 2010. Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe. London: The Bodley Head.
20. Pietz, W., 1987. The Problem of the Fetish, II. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 13, pp. 23-45.
21. Rooney, C., 2000. African Literature and Animism: Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures. London: Routledge.
22. Spivak, G. C., 1988. Can the Subaltern Speak?. In: L. Grossberge, ed. Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. London: Macmillan, pp. 271-313.
23. Taylor, J. V., 1963. The Primal Vision. London: SCM Press Ltd.
24. Thiong'o, N. w., 2009. Something torn and new: an African renaissance. New York: Basic Civitas Books.
25. Uchendu, E., 2008. Are African Males Men? Sketching African Masculinities in Contemporary Africa. s.l.:University of Nigeria.
26. Vallier, D., 1970. Abstract Art. New York: The Orion Press.
Published
2020-06-30
How to Cite
Wachira, I., Muhia, M. and Kaiga, K. (2020) “‘Sexing African Time and Space’: The Fetish of the Colonial Gender”, Journal of Law and Social Sciences, 4(2), pp. 29-39. doi: https://doi.org/10.53974/unza.jlss.4.2.469.
Section
Humanities