Bodies, Choices, Globalizing Neocolonial Enchantments: African Matriarchs and Mammy Water

Bodies, Choices, Globalizing Neocolonial Enchantments African Matriarchs and Mammy Water IFI AMADIUME In this essay I will examine collectivist notions ofwomen's solidarity in relation to women's power in traditional cultures and societies in Africa. My ultimate goal is to highlight growing tensions between traditional African matriarchitarianism and new counter-forces, such as Mammy Water. Using three examples oftraditional organizations ofwomen's cultures that embody matriarchitarianism, I argue that feminism and these traditions oforganized women's empowering cultures do not appear to be mutually exclusive. Nor are African traditions and modernity dichotomous . Yet, with globalization, new biologies, new desires, and new destinies, postcolonial, traditional African matriarchs are increasingly marginalized and face more serious competitions for the control and shaping ofwomen's bodies. What is the place ofnew assertive subjectivity (individual self) and choice for women and girls in new globalizing conditions ofsocial change? There is a need to revisit old grounds to raise new questions about how subversion is renegotiated and at what cost. Globalization and Matriarchitarianism As intellectual discourse seems rapidly to be shifting to globalization, there is a renewed interest in again rethinking feminism and proposing new feminist agendas. For African women,1 it is important that we enter this discussion from a critical perspective that is informed by our experiences in social history. African women had to struggle even to get a voice in feminism; they were not considered equal partners in the making of [Meridians:/eminism, race, transnationalism 2002, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 41-66]©2002 by Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved. 41 feminist agendas or policies. Without equality ofvoice and access, globalization in African experiences is no more than advanced neocolonialism informed by advanced capitalism in which Africans are simply consumers ofimported cultures. African women will suffer more abuses and more exploitation than ever before. Just as major historical contacts with Euro-Western cultures involved attacks on the humanity and cultures of African peoples, we equally expect that there will be an intensification ofthe erosion ofthe indigenous languages of Africans and specific cultures of African women. What, for example, are the implications ofthe banning, marginalization , or erosion of rituals that had strengthened the solidarity of women in many communities in Africa? With globalization will traditional rituals disappear and be replaced by state and international laws? How does law relate to women's cultures, the solidarity ofwomen, and relations between generations ofwomen? What are the bestways ofdealingwith the intensification ofnew forms ofviolence againstwomen such as, war (Amadiume and An-Na'im 2000; Turshen and Twagiramariya 1998) rape, hiv/aids, state violence, domestic violence, and trafficking in women (Amadiume 2000)? Girls also singly or collectively face modern violence in addition to older, traditional violence ofearly marriage, early childbirth, and patriarchal oppression (ibid.). Given that the progressive national movements emphasized the need for reform from within, the people's own culture was a means ofresistance to colonialism and a resource for national liberation. Itis urgent that this perspective not be lost in the fashionable discourse on globalization. It is equally important, in our easy assumptions about modernity as savior and tradition as unfreedom, not to lose sight ofthe traditional connections among mothers, daughters, girls, and women in precolonial societies and many traditional contemporary societies in Africa today. I use case studies to argue that colonialism created the dichotomous opposition oftradition versus modernity. The lasting legacy ofthis experience is that modernity is conceived as the opposite of tradition; you move from tradition to modern. I show that this claim is false since there is a critical dialectic in which this supposed modernity also presents problems for women. European-invented modernity, in comparison to precolonial gender structures, can be seen as a sexist, conservative tradition driven by a rigid patriarchal ideology of power. It insists on definingpower as male to the continued exclusion ofwomen, even highly educated and professional women (Amadiume 2000, 22). 42 IFI AMADIUME In traditional societies, girls were included in a protective women's culture headed by matriarchs. I shall call this "the matriarchal umbrella." The first example is based on aspects ofmy work that have focused on women-generated sociocultural institutions that historically have empowered women in specific societies and cultures in Africa...