Beyond gendercentric models: Restoring motherhood to Yoruba discourses of art and aesthetics

Abstract

Gendercentric models are rife in African Studies, and African art historical studies are no exception. Approaches that assume a genderdichotomized view of society are necessarily male-dominant, because in our time, patriarchy is the main expression of gender divisions. Two claims emerge from this biased branding of African art. First, that traditionally in Africa only men make art or engage in the production of important art. Second, that materials for making art are gender-specific: metals are for men, clay is for women; so goes the refrain. In fact, the second claim is actually expressed as a restriction against women's use of iron, and there is no obverse understanding that men are or can be constrained from using any material, including clay. Being male is assumed to be, everywhere in "traditional Africa," a mark of privilege, if not license. The effect of this antifemale stance is to place women at the receiving end of the gaze. But how and where did the claims that women are not artists, and that materials for making art are gender identifiable, originate? Many of these genderist and sexist ideas are based on observations of white adventurers, colonial ethnographers, missionaries, and colonial officials whose ethnocentric biases are very much tied up with their dominant positions and ideas about white racial and cultural superiority. Much of their intellectual engagement with Africa has been about how to fit African lives into their prefabricated theories. Despite the fact that some of the most reprehensible early European racist ideas about Africans have been thoroughly discredited, sexist notions have not. But this is not to say that racism and sexism are not intertwined. Why, then, do the most egregious gender-discriminatory claims continue to gain traction? Three main reasons are immediately apparent. First, many of the assumptions that white cultural imperialists and colonizers made about African art and societies have been left largely unquestioned. Embraced as received scholarly ideas, such claims are repeated across time and space by contemporary writers of all stripes, including Africans. Second, I suspect that some African male scholars have also embraced such sexist statements because they erroneously believe that to do so favors them today as a gender-identified group. Finally, many scholars continue to treat gender categories and gender dichotomies as natural, and therefore take expressions and practices of male dominance for granted in any time or place in which they are found. Decades of research have shown that gender is historical and socially constructed. I make a distinction between what I call genderist claims and sexist claims. Genderism is the idea that gender categories in human organization are timeless and universal. Sexism is the idea that male dominance is natural. More important, the homogenization and consequent miniaturizing of Africa's many nations, peoples, and cultures are the first indications of the problem of overly broad generalizations. Such universalizing about the continent is difficult to sustain, if not totally irrational. With regard to art and artistry in particular, this kind of continent-wide generalization is simply meaningless. Fundamentally, the most egregious part of the problem is the way in which such sweeping statements place the whole of the continent under the Western gaze, arrogantly reducing such a huge, diverse entity into one place and a single unit of analysis. As soon as one attempts to apply those statements to particular cultures and specific places, however, one discovers that such claims are false, or at best wanting. For example, in a paper on "African" ceramics, Jerome Vogel writes: "Throughout Africa, pottery is made primarily by women. . . . Men do make pots among a few groups, like the Hausa of Northern Nigeria, but this is an exception."1 The idea that millions of Hausa men and women are among "a few groups" is laughable, and begs the question: Who made the rules from which millions of Hausa are an exception? Certainly not Hausa people. From the perspective of Hausa communities in which men make pots, there is nothing exceptional about it, because there is no such rule. It is just a fact, not an exception. The exception exists only in the glazed eyes of the Western beholder. We have since discovered more "exceptions" across the continent to this Euro-American-made rule that African men do not make pottery; in Ghana, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Zambia, we find men sculpting clay in a variety of ethnic groups and nationalities.2 In the face of these biases, distortions, misrepresentations, and misunderstandings, it is clear that we must develop and highlight Africacentered approaches. Over the years, a number of African scholars have advocated for indigenous paradigms in apprehending art and artistry, and here are two examples. The cultural studies scholar Olabiyi Yai admonishes us that in approaching African art, we must examine all taken-for-granted assumptions, even if they are foundational to our disciplines, and that we must take indigenous discourses on art and art history seriously in our discussions.3 Similarly, art historian Rowland Abiodun advises that in the study of African art, we must try to understand an artwork in its cultural depth, as the expression of local thought or belief systems.4 Taking seriously the cautionary advice of both Yai and Abiodun, my goal in this chapter is to interrogate prevailing gendered approaches to traditional Yoruba art and art history, and then, drawing from Yoruba cultural values and social practices, elaborate the relationship between art and motherhood, procreation and artistry. In The Invention of Women, I show that gender is not an ontological category in the Yoruba world. In contrast, in Western thought gender is assumed to be ontological, and therefore timeless and universal. Consequently, the institution of motherhood in Western and scholarly discourses that derive from their dominance is represented as paradigmatic of female gender. But in the Yoruba ethos, motherhood is not about gender. The presence of categories that have to do with procreation and motherhood does not necessarily suggest the inherent nature of gender categories. In fact, as I argued in an earlier work, gender in Yoruba society is a colonial category that emerged during the period of European ascendancy and dominance. Gender by definition is a duality: it is about two categories in relation to each other, often oppositionally constructed. Motherhood in the Yoruba worldsense is a singular category that is unparalleled by any other. Fatherhood is not its counterpart. The roots of gender categories in contemporary Yoruba society are colonial.