On Our Own Terms: African Feminist Epistemologies in a Transnational Frame (5/31/05; journal issue)
"We will continue to define ourselves and our concerns on our own
terms", thus concludes Oyeronke Oyewumi's thought provoking introduction
to her recently edited volume, African Women and Feminism (2003). The
assertion underscores one of the most enduring predicaments of African
feminist epistemologies: the inevitable alterity of dominant Western
knowledge formations and their compulsive will to universality. Although
the detotalizations and despatializations of postmodernism, coupled with
the postcolonial's privileging of cultural pluralism, intermeshings, and
contingencies, have unsettled the bases of cultural/epistemological
authenticity, Oyewumi's phrase – "on our own terms" – suggests that