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ABSTRACT
In this essay, I advocate for the (re)centering of African epistemologies in research conducted on/about Africa in communication studies, particularly in feminist scholarship. I argue that African feminisms can serve as a critical decolonial tool providing valuable insights that can decenter whiteness and challenge the dominance of U.S.-centered frameworks for research conducted on/about Africa. I develop my discussion of a decolonial feminist communication agenda in five themes: (a) decolonizing the imperialistic portrayal of the African woman, (b) decolonizing African sexuality, (c) decolonizing the research process, (d) decolonizing the homogenization of Blackness, and (e) decolonizing ways of knowing. In so doing, I invite communication scholars to reflect on how and why they engage, make use of, or conduct communication research on/about Africa in order to reach an emancipatory goal of decolonizing the discipline.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the editor of the journal and the guest editors of this themed issue.
Notes
1 Godfried A. Asante and Gloria Nziba Pindi, “(Re)imagining African Futures: Wakanda and the Politics of Transnational Blackness,” Review of Communication 20, no. 3 (2020): 220–28.
2 Joëlle M. Cruz and Chigozirim Utah Sodeke, “Debunking Eurocentrism in Organizational Communication Theory: Marginality and Liquidities in Postcolonial Contexts,” Communication Theory 31, no. 3 (2021): 528–48; Eddah M. Mutua, Alberto González, and Anke Wolbert, eds., The Rhetorical Legacy of Wangari Maathai: Planting the Future (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2018); Wumpini Fatimata Mohammed, “Decolonizing African Media Studies,” Howard Journal of Communications 32, no. 2 (2021): 123–38; Gloria Nziba Pindi, “Hybridity and Identity Performance in Diasporic Context: An Autoethnographic Journey of the Self across Cultures,” Cultural Studies ⇔ Critical Methodologies 18, no. 1 (2018): 23–31.
3 Joëlle M. Cruz, “Reimagining Organizing in Global Times: Lessons from African Feminist Communication,” Women and Language 38, no. 1 (2015): 23–41; Mohammed, “Decolonizing African Media Studies”; Gloria Nziba Pindi, “Intersectional Feminism and Global Activism against Rape Culture: An Advocacy for the Inclusion of Congolese Victims and Survivors,” Women and Language 42, no. 1 (2019): 157–63.
4 Lisa B. Y. Calvente, Bernadette Marie Calafell, and Karma R. Chávez, “Here Is Something You Can’t Understand: The Suffocating Whiteness of Communication Studies,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 17, no. 2 (2020): 202–209; Paula Chakravraty, Rachel Kuo, Victoria Grubbs, and Charlton McIlwain, “#CommunicationSoWhite,” Journal of Communication 68, no. 2 (2018): 254–66.
5 Eddah M. Mutua, Alberto González, and Anke Wolbert, eds., “Introduction: Wangari Maathai and Social Justice Advocacy,” in The Rhetorical Legacy of Wangari Maathai: Planting the Future (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2018), xiv.
6 Ann Neville Miller et al., “Still the Dark Continent: A Content Analysis of Research about Africa and by African Scholars in 18 Major Communication-Related Journals,” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 6, no. 4 (2013): 329.
7 The term “Western” is used here to reference both white Eurocentric and U.S. American perspectives. The term “Africa” is used to refer specifically to Black African countries in the sub-Saharan region.
8 Raka Shome, “Transnational Feminism and Communication Studies,” The Communication Review 9, no. 4 (2006): 255–67.
9 Joëlle M. Cruz et al., “African Feminist and Queer Coalitions,” forum, Women’s Studies in Communication 43, no. 2 (2020): 101–30.
10 Joëlle M. Cruz, “Reimagining Organizing in Global Times: Lessons from African Feminist Communication,” Women & Language 38, no. 1 (2015): 23–41; “Invisibility and Visibility in Alternative Organizing: A Communicative and Cultural Model,” Management Communication Quarterly 31, no. 4 (2017): 614–39; Aida Opoku-Mensah, “Marching On: African Feminist Media Studies,” Feminist Media Studies 1, no. 1 (2001): 25–34; Tanja Bosch, “African Feminist Media Studies: A View from the Global South,” Feminist Media Studies 11, no. 1 (2011): 27–33; Mohammed, “Decolonizing African Media Studies”; Gloria Nziba Pindi, “Exploring African Female Immigrants’ Perceptions of Their Portrayal in the U.S. Media,” in Media across the African Diaspora: Content, Audiences, and Global Influence, ed. Omotoya O. Banjo (London: Routledge, 2019), 125–46; Cruz et al., “African Feminist and Queer Coalitions.”
11 Olabisi Aina, “African Women at the Grassroots: The Silent Partners of the Women’s Movement,” in Sisterhood, Feminisms and Power: From Africa to the Diaspora, ed. Obioma Nnaemeka (Trenton, NJ: African World Press, 1998), 74.
12 Pindi, “Hybridity and Identity Performance in Diasporic Context”; “From the Congo to the United States: Negotiating the ‘Politics of Academia’ across Cultures,” in Postcolonial Turn and Geopolitical Uncertainty: Transnational Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy, ed. Ahmet Atay and Yea-Wen Chen (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2021), 1–20.
13 Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Empire, Global Coloniality and African Subjectivity (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013), 180–82.
14 Obioma Nnaemeka, “‘Mapping African Feminisms,’ Adapted Version of ‘Introduction: Reading the Rainbow,’ from Sisterhood, Feminisms, and Power: From Africa to the Diaspora,” in Readings in Gender in Africa, ed. Andrea Cornwall (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 31.
15 Susan Arndt, Dynamics of African Feminism: Defining and Classifying African-Feminist Literatures (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2002).
16 Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi, “Womanism: The Dynamics of the Contemporary Black Female Novel in English,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 11, no. 1 (1985): 63–80; Mary E. Modupe Kolawole, Womanism and African Consciousness (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1997); Catherine Obianuju Acholonu, Motherism: The Afrocentric Alternative to Feminism (London: Afa Publications, 1995); Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Re-Creating Ourselves: African Women and Critical Transformations (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1994); Obioma Nnaemeka, “Nego-Feminism: Theorizing, Practicing, and Pruning Africa’s Way,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 29, no. 2 (2004): 362–63; Sylvia Tamale, Decolonization and Afro-Feminism (Ottawa, ONT: Dajara Press, 2020).
17 Nnaemeka, “‘Mapping African Feminisms,’” 32.
18 Ibid.
19 Njoki Wane, “African Indigenous Feminist Thought,” in The Politics of Cultural Knowledge, ed. Njoki Wane, Alo Kempf, and Marlon Simmons (Rotterdam, Netherlands: Brill-Sense, 2011), 7.
20 Ali M. Tripp, Isabel Casimiro, Joy Kwesiga, and Alice Mungwa, African Women’s Movements: Transforming Political Landscapes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2009); Filomina C. Steady, “African Feminism: A Worldwide Perspective,” in Women in Africa and the African Diaspora, ed. Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, Sharon Harley, and Andrea B. Rushing (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1987), 3–24; Ogundipe-Leslie, Re-Creating Ourselves.
21 Tripp, Casimiro, Kwesiga, and Mungwa, African Women’s Movements, 33.
22 Arndt, Dynamics of African Feminism.
23 Tamale, Decolonization and Afro-Feminism, 40.
24 Tripp, Casimiro, Kwesiga, and Mungwa, African Women’s Movements.
25 Ibid.
26 Tamale, Decolonization and Afro-Feminism, 41.
27 Oyeronke Oyewumi, ed., “The White Woman’s Burden: African Women in Western Feminist Discourse,” in African Women and Feminism: Reflecting on the Politics of Sisterhood (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003), 25–43; Tamale, Decolonization and Afro-Feminism.
28 Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization (London: Routledge, 2018), 8, 24.
29 Oyeronke Oyewumi, ed., “Visualizing the Body: Western Theories and African Subjects,” in African Gender Studies: A Reader (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 16.
30 Cruz et al., “African Feminist and Queer Coalitions.”
31 Obioma Nnaemeka, “Bringing African Women into the Classroom: Rethinking Pedagogy and Epistemology,” in African Gender Studies: A Reader, ed. Oyeronke Oyewumi (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 52.
32 Arndt, Dynamics of African Feminism; Ogundipe-Leslie, Re-Creating Ourselves.
33 Tamale, Decolonization and Afro-Feminism, 41.
34 Ogundipe-Leslie, Re-Creating Ourselves, 208.
35 Oyewumi, “Visualizing the Body,” 11.
36 Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, no. 1, Article 8 (1989): 139–67.
37 Simidele Dosekun, “For Western Girls Only? Post-Feminism as Transnational Culture,” Feminist Media Studies 15, no. 6 (2015): 960–75; Shome, “Transnational Feminism and Communication Studies”; Pindi, “Intersectional Feminism and Global Activism against Rape Culture.”
38 Arndt, Dynamics of African Feminism.
39 See Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (London: Routledge, 2009).
40 Oyewumi, “The White Woman’s Burden”; “Visualizing the Body”; “Alice in Motherland: Reading Alice Walker on Africa and Screening the Color ‘Black,’” in African Women and Feminism: Reflecting on the Politics of Sisterhood (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003): 159–85.
41 Ibid.
42 Dina Bader, “Picturing Female Circumcision and Female Genital Cosmetic Surgery: A Visual Framing Analysis of Swiss Newspapers 1983–2015,” Feminist Media Studies 19, no. 8 (2019): 1171.
43 Oyewumi, “The White Woman’s Burden,” 32.
44 Cruz, “Reimagining Organizing in Global Times.”
45 Oyewumi, “Alice in Motherland,” 161.
46 Marquita M. Gammage and Justin T. Gammage, “Stereotyped Representations of African Cultural Values in Black Media: A Critical Analysis,” in Media across the African Diaspora: Content, Audiences, and Global Influence, ed. Omotoya O. Banjo (London: Routledge, 2019), 85–97.
47 Pindi, “Exploring African Female Immigrants’ Perceptions of Their Portrayal in the U.S. Media.”
48 Megan E. Morrissey, “Rape as a Weapon of Hate: Discursive Constructions and Material Consequences of Black Lesbianism in South Africa,” Women’s Studies in Communication 36, no. 1 (2013): 72–91; Rachel Alicia Griffin, “Pushing into Precious: Black Women, Media Representation, and the Glare of the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchal Gaze,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 31, no. 3 (2014): 182–97.
49 Godfried A. Asante and Rita Daniels, “‘(Re)defining Images of African Women’: A Postfeminist Critique of the Ghanaian YouTube Series ‘An African City,’” in Media across the African Diaspora: Content, Audiences, and Global Influence, ed. Omotoya O. Banjo (London: Routledge, 2019), 51–68.
50 Jenna N. Hanchey, “Reframing the Present: Mock Aid Videos and the Foreclosure of African Epistemologies,” Women & Language 42, no. 2 (2019): 317–44.
51 Pindi, “Intersectional Feminism and Global Activism against Rape Culture,” 161.
52 Ifi Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society (London: Zed Books, 1987); Regine S. Oboler, “Is the Female Husband a Man? Woman/Woman Marriage among the Nandi of Kenya,” Ethnology 19, no. 1 (1980): 69–88.
53 Cruz et al., “African Feminist and Queer Coalitions.”
54 Ibid.
55 Oyewumi, “Visualizing the Body,” 12.
56 Oyerunke Oyewumi, “Conceptualizing Gender: The Eurocentric Foundations of Feminist Concepts and the Challenge of African Epistemologies,” JENdA: A Journal of Culture and African Women’s Studies 2, no. 1 (2002): 8.
57 Morrissey, “Rape as a Weapon of Hate.”
58 Godfried Asante, “‘Queerly Ambivalent’: Navigating Global and Local Normativities in Postcolonial Ghana,” in Queer Intercultural Communication: The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and across Differences, ed. Shinsuke Eguchi and Bernadette Marie Calafell (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), 157–76; Godfried Asante and Jenna N. Hanchey, “Decolonizing Queer Modernities: The Case for Queer (Post)Colonial Studies in Critical/Cultural Communication,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 18, no. 2 (2021): 212–20.
59 Cruz et al., “African Feminist and Queer Coalitions.”
60 Linda T. Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 2nd ed. (London: Zed Books, 2012).
61 Dwight Conquergood, “Performing as a Moral Act: Ethical Dimensions of the Ethnography of Performance,” Literature in Performance 5, no. 2 (1985): 1–13; D. Soyini Madison, Critical Ethnography: Methods, Ethics, and Performance (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2012).
62 Nnaemeka, “Nego-Feminism,” 366.
63 Ibid., 367.
64 Marnia Lazrey, “Decolonizing Feminism,” in African Gender Studies: A Reader, ed. Oyeronke Oyewumi (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 76.
65 Emma Heywood and Beatrice Ivey, “Radio as an Empowering Environment: How Does Radio Broadcasting in Mali Represent Women’s ‘Web of Relations’?” Feminist Media Studies (2021). doi: 10.1080/14680777.2021.1877768; Emma Heywood and Maria Tomlinson, “The Contribution of Citizen Views to Understanding Women’s Empowerment as a Process of Change: The Case of Niger,” Feminist Media Studies 20, no. 5 (2020): 713–29.
66 Cruz, “Reimagining Organizing in Global Times.”
67 Ann Neville Miller, “Keeping up with Cartography: A Call to Study African Communication,” in International and Intercultural Communication Annual, vol. 28, ed. William J. Starosta and Guo-Ming Chen (Washington, DC: National Communication Association, 2004), 226.
68 Mary J. Collier, Brandi Lawless, and Karambu Ringera, “Negotiating Contextually Contingent Agency: Situated Feminist Peacebuilding Strategies in Kenya,” Women’s Studies in Communication 39, no. 4 (2016): 399–421.
69 Nnaemeka, “Bringing African Women into the Classroom,” 57.
70 Sophia Mama, The Woman in Me: The Struggles of an African Woman to Discover Her Identity and Authority (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2010).
71 See Dawn Marie D. McIntosh and Shinsuke Eguchi, eds., “Intercultural Performance Communication,” special issue, Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 49, no. 5 (2020): 395–497.
72 Arndt, Dynamics of African Feminism; Nnaemeka, “Nego-Feminism.”
73 Nnaemeka, “Bringing African Women into the Classroom,” 54.
74 Bernadette Marie Calafell, “The Critical Performative Turn in Intercultural Communication,” Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 49, no. 5 (2020): 410–15.
75 Dawn Marie D. McIntosh and Shinsuke Eguchi, “The Troubled Past, Present Disjuncture, and Possible Futures: Intercultural Performance Communication,” Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 49, no. 5 (2020): 5.
76 Arndt, Dynamics of African Feminism.
77 Oyewumi, “Alice in Motherland,” 177.
78 Bryant K. Alexander, “Critically Analyzing Pedagogical Interactions as Performance,” in Performance Theories in Education: Power, Pedagogy, and the Politics of Identity, ed. Bryant K. Alexander, Gary L. Anderson, and Bernardo P. Gallegos (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005), 51.
79 Oyewumi, “Alice in Motherland,” 177.
80 Shinsuke Eguchi, Bernadette M. Calafell, and Shadee Abdi, eds., De-Whitening Intersectionality: Race, Intercultural Communication, and Politics (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2020).
81 Nnaemeka, “Introduction: Reading the Rainbow,” 7 original emphasis.
82 Pindi, “Hybridity and Identity Performance in Diasporic Context.”
83 Mama, The Woman in Me; Nnaemeka, “Nego-Feminism”; Gloria Nziba Pindi, “Speaking Back to Academic Colonial Gatekeeping: The Significance of Intercultural Performance Studies Works in Promoting Marginalized Knowledges and Identities,” Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 49, no. 5 (2020): 442–57.
84 Pindi, “Speaking Back to Academic Colonial Gatekeeping.”
85 Joëlle M. Cruz, “Brown Body of Knowledge: A Tale of Erasure,” Cultural Studies ⇔ Critical Methodologies 18, no. 5 (2017): 363–65.
86 Mohammed, “Decolonizing African Media Studies.”
87 Ibid.
88 Godfried Agyeman Asante, “#RhetoricSoWhite and US Centered: Reflections on Challenges and Opportunities,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 105, no. 4 (2019): 485.
89 Mutua, González, and Wolbert, “Introduction,” xiii.
90 Miller, “Keeping up with Cartography,” 226.