Is the African feminist moral epistemology of care fractured?

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the extent to which the concrete and lived experiences of, and understanding of the world by, African women in indigenous African spaces are seriously taken into consideration and put in focus in the last few decades of largely academic, standpoint African feminist discourses. I argue that indigenous (traditional) African feminist perspective of the world has been mostly fractured by a subtle standpoint feminist epistemology that is Western, colonial and theoretically oppressive. African feminists are wont to analyse feminist issues in African spaces (both at home and in the Diaspora) from this Western and colonial standpoint as a superior vantage perspective of women’s experiences. I question this point by focussing specifically on an African indigenous feminist moral epistemology of care. I argue that the modern feminist discourse on this subject is fractured by the Western and colonial standpoint and largely ignores the traditional African women’s perspective of the subject. While the traditional African women’s theory of knowledge of care consists of a cherished moral duty to care for and nurture the human society, the modern African feminist standpoint views such moral duty as mostly oppressive and discriminating against women. In this regard, I shift focus from the Westerninfluenced African standpoint feminism to explore a problem that may not yet be receiving much attention in the quest to protect the dignity and wellbeing of African women, patriarchal opportunism. I conclude that key feminist issues in African spaces such as racism, colonialism, social and economic equality and sexuality ought to be approached from the perspective of the concrete and lived experiences of African women for authentic, unfractured knowledge to emerge.