Naked Agency

Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa

Naminata Diabate (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

272 Seiten

2020
Duke University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4780-0688-6 (ISBN)

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Across Africa, mature women have for decades mobilized the power of their nakedness in political protest to shame and punish male adversaries. This insurrectionary nakedness, often called genital cursing, owes its cultural potency to the religious belief that spirits residing in women's bodies can be unleashed to cause misfortune in their targets, including impotence, disease, and death. In Naked Agency, Naminata Diabate analyzes these collective female naked protests in Africa and beyond to broaden understandings of agency and vulnerability. Drawing on myriad cultural texts from social media and film to journalism and fiction, Diabate uncovers how women create spaces of resistance during socio-political duress, including such events as the 2011 protests by Ivoirian women in CÔte d’Ivoire and Paris as well as women's disrobing in Soweto to prevent the destruction of their homes. Through the concept of naked agency, Diabate explores fluctuating narratives of power and victimhood to challenge simplistic accounts of African women's helplessness and to show how they exercise political power in the biopolitical era.

Naminata Diabate is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Cornell University.

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Exceptional Nakedness 1
Section I. Restriction
Scene 1. Exceptional Conditions and Darker Shades of Biopolitics 29
Scene 2. Dobsonville and the Question of Autonomy 43
Section II. Co-operation
Scene 3. Africanizing Nakedness as (Self-)Instrumentalization 65
Scene 4. In the Name of National Interest 89
Scene 5. Film as Instrumental and Interpretive Lens 107
Section III. Repression
Scene 6. Secularizing Genital Cursing and Rhetorical Backlash 131
Scene 7. Epistemic Ignorance and Menstrual Rags in Paris 149
Scene 8. Mis(Reading) Murderous Reactions 175
Epilogue: Defiant Disrobing Going Viral 191
Notes 197
References 219
Index 251

Erscheinungsdatum	25.02.2020
Reihe/Serie	Theory in Forms
Zusatzinfo	20 illustrations
Verlagsort	North Carolina
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	408 g
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Lebenshilfe / Lebensführung
	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Schönheit / Kosmetik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
ISBN-10	1-4780-0688-9 / 1478006889
ISBN-13	978-1-4780-0688-6 / 9781478006886
Zustand	Neuware