As today we see Western countries enacting various immigration laws and borders are being mined to prevent “intruders” from accessing those countries. Faced with (in)security in Africa, the African woman has become that monster of abjection residing in that marginal geography, dwelling in the gates of difference in unfamiliar spaces. The African woman faced with (im)migration goes through a strong feeling of revulsion, fear, or aversion, she is treated as something that is a threat to one’s boundaries and undermines one’s sense of identity and security, exemplifying Kristeva’s idea of abjection. What joy narrative is available to these women trapped in a thirdness: being an African woman subjugated by patriarchal norms, being a woman occupying a male-dominated space, and being a foreigner; a body outside the norm? How do these women (re)present the experienced change caused by shifting cultural paradigms, technological breakthroughs, and societal shifts? Studying the (r)evolution in the writings of African female writers, this proposal examines the transformative paths taken by these authors, emphasizing the ways in which they have adopted a variety of narrative forms, reinvented genres, and tackled socio-political issues in their writing. Exploring these writings will expose us to the psychological and existential condition of these women who have experienced life in Africa, life in the liminal spaces, and life in and outside Africa. The concept of attachment theory by John Bowlby, the Freudian concept of repression, and Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage theory have shown how fluidity, multiplicity, and contingency of social formations could be studied in narratives by women as portrayed by most African women writers.
Topics that will be covered by this panel include but are not limited to:
(Im)immigration, (in)security, liminality, identity, visibility, marginalization, patriarchal norms, trauma, cartography, abjection, monstrosity.