1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910255231603321

Autore

Oyěwùmí Oyèrónkẹ́

Titolo

What Gender is Motherhood? : Changing Yorùbá Ideals of Power, Procreation, and Identity in the Age of Modernity / / by Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York : , : Palgrave Macmillan US : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2016

ISBN

1-137-52125-2

Edizione

[1st ed. 2016.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (XIII, 262 p.)

Collana

Gender and Cultural Studies in Africa and the Diaspora

Disciplina

306.874/308996333

Soggetti

Ethnology - Africa

Culture

Sex

Communication

Culture - Study and teaching

Race

Sociology

African Culture

Gender Studies

Media and Communication

Cultural Studies

Race and Ethnicity Studies

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: Exhuming subjugated knowledge and liberating marginalized epistemes -- Divining knowledge: the man question in if? -- (Re)casting the Yorùbá world: Ifá, Ìyá and the signification of difference -- Matripotency: Ìyá in philosophical concempts and socio-policial institutions -- Writing and gendering the past: Akọ̀wé and the endogenous production of history -- The gender dictaters: making gender attributions in religion and culture -- Towards a genealogy of gender, gendered names, and naming practices -- The poetry of weeping brides: the role and impact of marriage residence in the



making of praise names -- Changing names: the roles of Christianity and Islam in making Yorùbá names kosher for the modern world -- Conclusion: Motherhood in the quest for social transformation.

Sommario/riassunto

In this book, Oyěwùmí extends her path-breaking thesis that in Yorùbá society, construction of gender is a colonial development since the culture exhibited no gender divisions in its original form. Taking seriously indigenous modes and categories of knowledge, she applies her finding of a non-gendered ontology to the social institutions of Ifá, motherhood, marriage, family and naming practices. Oyěwùmí insists that contemporary assertions of male dominance must be understood, in part, as the work of local intellectuals who took marching orders from Euro/American mentors and colleagues. In exposing the depth of the coloniality of power, Oyěwùmí challenges us to look at the worlds we inhabit, anew.