Border gnoseologyAkwaeke Emezi and the decolonial other-than-human

  1. López Rodríguez, Marta Sofía
Zeitschrift:
Ecozon@ [Ecozona]: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment

ISSN: 2171-9594

Datum der Publikation: 2022

Titel der Ausgabe: The postcolonial nonhuman

Ausgabe: 13

Nummer: 2

Seiten: 77-91

Art: Artikel

DOI: 10.37536/ECOZONA.2022.13.2.4669 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_opene_Buah editor

Andere Publikationen in: Ecozon@ [Ecozona]: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment

Ziele für nachhaltige Entwicklung

Zusammenfassung

The underlying assumption when speaking about the postcolonial nonhuman is that the other-than-human refers to what could be called, broadly speaking, the “natural world,” as opposed to “the human-as-Man,” but still usually understood in (Western) secular terms. Nevertheless, from the perspective of African onto-epistemologies, the nonhuman can also refer to the spiritual world, or to the diverse assemblages between the “natural,” the human and the sacred. “Freshwater” and “Dear Senthuran. A Black Spirit Memoir”, by Akwaeke Emezi, open up a space of “border gnoseology,” where contemporary Anglo-American discourses on transsexuality intersect with African ontologies and epistemologies, specifically with the well-known figure of the “ogbanje” and the sacred python as an avatar of Ala, the Earth goddess in Igbo culture, to produce a radically subversive embodied subjectivity. The ideas of movement, transing, tranimalcy and (transatlantic) crossing conspire to dismantle conventional Eurocentric humanist views on selfhood and identity. Reading Emezi on their own terms also requires revisiting alternative notions of temporality beyond secular, cisheteronormative, modern time, as well as an understanding that the sacred and the spiritual are indeed essential to the worldview and the processes of subjectivation of millions of people across the globe.

Bibliographische Referenzen

  • Achebe, Chinwe. The World of the Ogbanje. Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1986.
  • Adeleke, Israel. Theorizing the Abiku/Ogbanje Motif in Sefi Ata’s Everything Good Will Come, Wale Okediran’s Tenants of the House and Helon Habila’s Oil on Water, 2016, https://www.academia.edu/45202896/THEORISING_THE_ABIKU_OGBANJE_MOTIF_IN_SEFI_ATTAS_EVERYTHING_GOOD_WILL_COME_WALE_OKEDIRANS_TENANTS_OF_THE_HOUSE_AND_HELON_HABILAS_OIL_ON_WATER?email_work_card=title. Accessed 25 Jul. 2021.
  • Ahmed, Sara. “Orientations: Toward a Queer Phenomenology.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 12, no. 4, Oct. 2006, pp. 543–74, doi: 10.1215/10642684-2006-002.
  • Alexander, M. Jaqui.Pedagogies of Crossing. Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory and the Sacred. Duke University Press, 2005, doi: 10.1215/9780822386988.
  • Aultman, B Lee. Injurious Acts: Notes on Happiness from the Trans Ordinary, 2019, https://www.academia.edu/41177271/Injurious_Acts_Notes_on_Happiness_from_the_Trans_Ordinary?email_work_card=title. Accessed 2 Aug. 2021.
  • Bastian, Misty.“Irregular Visitors: Narratives about Ogbanje (Spirit Children) in Nigerian Popular Writing.” Readings in African Popular Fiction, edited by Stephanie Newell, IAI/James Currey, 2002.
  • Beneduce, Roberto, and Simona Taliani. “Embodied Powers, Deconstructed Bodies. Spirit Possession, Sickness, and the Search for Wealth of Nigerian Immigrant Women.” Anthropos, vol. 101, no. 2, 2006, pp. 429-449.
  • Bresser, Nina.Tranimal Trajectories: Re-Configuring Trans-Embodiment Through a Companion Species Figuration, 2015, https://www.academia.edu/10955519/Tranimal_Trajectories_Re_Configuring_Trans_Embodiment_Through_a_Companion_Species_Figuration. Accessed 4 Aug. 2021.
  • Carter, J. “Embracing Transition, or Dancing in the Folds of Time.” The Transgender Studies Reader 2, edited by Susan Stryker and Aren Z. Aizura. Routledge, 2013, pp. 130-143.
  • Colebrook, Claire. “What Is It Like to Be a Human?” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, vol. 2, no. 2, 2015, pp. 227-243, doi: 10.1215/23289252-2867472.
  • Ebhomienlen, Thomas O. “The Concepts of Born to Die Children and the Fate of Victim Mothers in Nigeria.” International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 2015, pp. 142-155.
  • Eliade, Mircea. Lo Sagrado y lo profano. Paidós, 1957, 1998.
  • Emezi, Akwaeke. Freshwater. Grove Press, 2018.
  • Emezi, Akwaeke. Dear Senthuran. Faber & Faber, 2021.
  • Flax-Clark Aidan. “Debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi Recenters Reality.” The NYPL Podcast,Ep. 206, March 2018,https://www.nypl.org/blog/2018/03/12/ debut-novelist-akwaeke-emezi-recenters-reality-nypl-podcast-ep-tk. Accessed 29 Jun. 2021.
  • Halberstam, J. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York University Press, 2005.
  • Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto.” The Transgender Studies Reader, edited by Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle, Routledge, 2006, pp. 103-118. doi: 10.4324/9780203955055.
  • Hayward, Eva. “Lessons from a Starfish.” Queering the Non/Human, edited by Hird Myra J. and Noreen Giffney, Routledge, 2008, doi: 10.4324/9781315603308.
  • Hayward, Eva, and Jami Weinstein. “Tranimalities in the Age of Trans* Life.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, vol. 2, no. 2, 2015,pp. 195–208, doi: 10.1215/23289252-2867446.
  • Hewett, Heather. “Litany of Madness.” Women’s Review of Books, vol. 35, no. 4, 2018, p. 15.Horak, L. “Trans on YouTube: Intimacy, Visibility, Temporality.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, vol. 1 , no. 4, 2014, pp. 572–585, doi: 10.1215/23289252-2815255.
  • Huggan, Graham and Helen Tiffin. “Green Postcolonialism.” Interventions, vol. 9, no. 1, 2007, pp. 1-11, doi: 10.1080/13698010601173783.
  • Ilechukwu, Sunday T. C.“Ogbanje/Abiku and cultural conceptualizations of psychopathology in Nigeria.” Mental Health Religion & Culture, vol. 10, no. 3, 2007, pp. 239-255, doi: 10.1080/13694670600621795. Accessed 3 Aug. 2021.Kancler, Tjaša.Body-politics, Trans* Imaginary and Decoloniality, 2016, https://www.academia.edu/31557368/Body_politics_Trans_Imaginary_and_Decoloniality. Accessed 23 Jul. 2021.
  • Lau, Jacob Roberts. Between the Times: “Trans-Temporality and Historical Representation.” UCLA, 2016, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3js3t1s5. Accessed 3 Sept. 2021.
  • Line, Sebastian De. “A Generous and Troubled Chthulucene: Contemplating Indigenous and Tranimal Relations in (Un)settled Worldings.” Graduate Journal of Social Science, vol. 14, no. 2, 2018, pp. 83-106, http://gjss.org/sites/default/files/issues/chapters/papers/GJSS%20Vol%2014-2%206%20De%20Line.pdf. Accessed 5 Aug. 2021.
  • Midde, Max van, Ludovico Vick Virtù andOlga Cielemęcka. “Editorial – Trans materialities.” Graduate Journal of Social Science, vol. 14, no. 2, 2018, pp. 4-9.
  • Mignolo, Walter D. The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality and Colonization. University of Michigan Press, 1995.
  • Mignolo, Walter D. . Local Histories/Global Designs. E-book, Princeton University Press, 2012.
  • Mudimbe, V. Y. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge.Indiana University Press, 1988.
  • Ogundare, Temitope. “Mental Illness or A Dwelling Place of the Gods? Exploration of Psychopathology in 'Freshwater'.” International Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 5, no. 4, 2021, https://www.academia.edu/44992255/Mental_Illness_or_A_Dwelling _Place_of_the_Gods_Exploration_of_Psychopathology_in_Freshwater . Accessed 1 Jul. 2021.
  • Ogunyemi, Chikwenye O. Africa Wo/Man Palava. The University of Chicago Press, 1996.
  • Okonkwo, Christopher N. “A Critical Divination: Reading Sula as Ogbanje-Abiku.” African American Review, vol. 38, no. 4, 2004, pp. 651-668. JSTOR, doi: 10.2307/4134423.
  • Pearce, Ruth. “Trans Temporalities and Non-Linear Ageing.” Older Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans People: Minding the Knowledge Gaps, Routledge, 2018.
  • Prosser, Jay. “Skin Memories.” Thinking through the Skin, edited by Sara Ahmed y Jackie Stacy, Routledge, 2001, pp. 52-68.
  • Puar, Jasbir. “‘I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess’ Becoming-Intersectional in Assemblage Theory,”Transversal, 2012, https://transversal.at/transversal/0811/puar/en. Accessed 19 Aug. 2021.
  • Schneider, Luisa T. “The Ogbanje Who Wanted to Stay: The Occult, Belonging, Family and Therapy in Sierra Leone.” Ethnography, vol. 18, no. 2, Oct. 2016, pp. 133–52.Sage Journals, doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/146613811667338
  • Silva Santana, Dora. “Transitionings and Returnings.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 2, May 2017, pp. 181–90.Duke University Press, doi:10.1215/23289252-3814973
  • Sinha, Suvadip, and Amit R. Baishya, editors. Postcolonial Animalities. E-book, Taylor and Francis, 2021.
  • Stone, Sandy. “The Empire Strikes Back. A Posttranssexual Manifesto.” The Transgender Studies Reader, edited by Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle, Routledge, 2006, pp.221-235. doi: 10.4324/9780203955055.
  • Stryker, Susan. “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamonix.” The Transgender Studies Reader, edited by Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle, Routledge, 2006, pp. 244-256. doi: 10.4324/9780203955055.
  • Stryker, Susan. “(De)Subjugated Knowledges: An Introduction to transgender Studies.” The Transgender Studies Reader, edited by Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle, Routledge, 2006, pp. 1 -18. doi: 10.4324/9780203955055.
  • Wynter, Sylvia. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation--An Argument.” CR: The New Centennial Review, vol. 3, no. 3, 2003, pp. 257–337. Project Muse, doi:10.1353/ncr.2004.0015
Fuente de los datos: Dialnet