Last month, I sent this piece around by email, by facebook, by almost every method of communication, but not by blog post, strangely enough. However, it is well worth having up for transient posterity on these pages; to those who might be interested, this is an extraordinary and powerful challenge to the editors of the recently published Norton Reader on Feminist Literary Theory and Criticism, an ambitious work seeking to ‘trace the historical evolution of feminist writing about literature in English from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century’.
Pius Adesanmi asks the editors why – in an edited volume spanning over 100 contributors – they did not see fit to include an article by an African feminist theorist:
It is your awareness of these things that makes your excision of African feminist theories and theorists from your volume all the more alarming. Could it be that you imagined that the voices of the African American women you selected adequately speak for those of their continental sisters? Possibly. If this is the case, I must tell you that African American women cannot be made to stand in and speak for continental African women. According to an African proverb, the monkey and the gorilla may claim oneness, monkey is monkey and gorilla gorilla. Perhaps you imagined that African women would be better served to find some space inside the Third World/postcolonial/transnational feminist umbrella you represented with the voices of Gayatri Spivak and Chandra Mohanty? Possibly. Could it be that you are simply unaware of the considerable body of African feminist intellection, right there in your back of the wood in the US academy? Possibly. Could it be that you just simply elected to disappear them like you disappeared me? Possibly.
I think his challenge goes beyond that of acknowledging the critical presence of African feminist thought – though that is clearly the immediate provocation – and pushes us all to think about issues of inclusion, exclusion and legitimacy in academic circles. Important indeed.