Decolonizing the Female Sexuality: What Nigerian Female Writers Don't Write

Abstract

This paper queries the phenomenon of the dominant mode(s) of knowledge production from the angle of how sexualities are captured in such manners that depict the partisanship of the producers of knowledge and their products. It posits that knowledge as a universal phenomenon is a human construction, which is essentially subjective and which expression often disrepresents or misrepresents the other. Women's experience of oppressions in the sphere of sexuality, it argues, is central to the issue of a liberal existence, and such oppressions are largely premised on traditional epistemologies which are basically patriarchal. Drawing upon various female-authored literary texts from Nigeria, it illustrates how Nigerian feminist writers still pander to the dictates of patriarchal epistemologies in the sphere of sexuality by their lack of capacity or interest in creating female characters whose sexuality and, by extension, general development are intrinsically male-dependent. Finally, it states the need for Nigerian writers, the female ones especially, to reconstruct women's sexuality in an overwhelming atmosphere of real freedom and gender equality.


(The Journal of Cultural Studies: 2001 3(1): 152-167)