In this article, we explore how a shift in the traditional notions of women’s identity is represented in Ahmed Yerima’s Pari (2016) and Soji Cole’s Embers (2018). We argue that changes in identity result from the women characters’ resistance to patriarchal oppression in the wake of Boko Haram terrorism. Available studies on both plays hardly appreciate the resistance efforts of the women victims of terrorism. Hence, we conducted this study within the frameworks of Irene Visser’s model of postcolonial trauma theory and Wole Soyinka’s tragic vision to examine how women’s resistance to oppression in the face of terrorism reshapes their identity in the plays. We demonstrate that the playwrights shift from portraying feminine identity merely in terms of victimhood and vulnerability to appreciating the different means of resistance used by the female victims of terrorism in the plays, including social cohesion, body politics, forgiveness, violence, and apostasy. These resistance modes provoke changes in the identity of the female characters as the hitherto meek, quiet, and submissive among them transform into bold, vocal, and violent personas in the plays. The study illustrates that women’s resistance to patriarchal oppression in the face of terrorism reshapes their identities in Pari and Embers and that the prevalence of the theme of cultural resistance in the plays suggests the playwrights’ attempts to decolonise tragedy.
In this article, I examine Négritude not as a static literary doctrine but as a historically evolving, intellectually hybrid, and politically instrumentalised field of discourse. I focus on the central question of how Léopold Sédar Senghor’s formulation of Négritude—frequently criticised for its essentialist and racialised premises—operated simultaneously as a philosophical project and as a resource for German-African cultural dialogue and Cold War cultural diplomacy. I approach Négritude from a comparative and intercultural perspective, reconstructing its Parisian origins, its entanglement with German Romanticism and Leo Frobenius’s cultural morphology, and its subsequent reconfiguration in Senghor’s shift from essentialist cultural typologies towards métissage and a civilisation de l’universel. I argue that these intellectual entanglements were not merely sources of philosophical inspiration but also created a symbolic repertoire that could later be mobilised in cultural and diplomatic relations. Against this intellectual-historical background, I trace the reception and political appropriation of Senghor and Négritude in the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. I demonstrate that West Germany mobilised Senghor’s intellectual affinity with German culture, his international literary prestige, and his political standing in postcolonial Africa to bolster its claims to humanist internationalism and to cultivate German-African cultural relations. East Germany, by contrast, sought to integrate Senghor into its anti-imperialist cultural diplomacy while remaining deeply suspicious of the ideological premises of Négritude and Senghor’s political orientation. My key finding is that Négritude functioned as a flexible symbolic currency in the geopolitical competition between the two German states. At the same time, its divergent appropriations reveal the selective readings, omissions, and ideological adaptations through which African intellectual concepts acquired new meanings as they circulated within European cultural and political contexts.
Re-defining Ghanaian hiplife songs by women as liberatory narratives A careful study of contemporary Ghanaian hiplife songs by women reveals a rich lode of subtle sexual innuendoes, liberatory remarks, resistance discourses, and overt and covert protests. The name "hiplife" is a compound of hip-hop and highlife, which points to the two major influences that constitute the genre. Its most marked features are rap lyrics in Twi, Fante, Ga, Ewe, Pidgin English, and other local languages, which are performed over programmed beats, bass lines, and sampled loops. One of the inherent features of hiplife music is its objectification of women in many forms. However, recent Ghanaian women hiplife artistes have created music that counters these images and portrays women as more than the sum of their bodies. In this article, we employ a poststructuralist feminist approach to analyse selected songs by women hiplife artistes in Ghana, asserting that Ghanaian women hiplife artistes create music that is revolutionary and sexually liberating. We then contend that this emergence of a new wave of hiplife music by the women is both an indication of the democratic landscape that makes it possible for women's voices to be heard and for their views to be validated, as well as a resistance movement that seeks to change the narrative. This article has implications for African feminism, gender, and the creative industry, as it contributes to the discussion on ways through which the creative industry can be harnessed not just for entertainment but also for a reorientation of ideas and values.
In this article, I examine MmaAusi's music as a dynamic site of Setswana language preservation, cultural protest, and liberatory expression, situating her work within a broader transnational lineage of Black women's musical storytelling as a form of resistance and cultural memory. Through a multidisciplinary analysis of three selected songs spanning her career from 2008 to 2022, I investigate how MmaAusi employs linguistic richness, deliberate cultural references, and sonic innovations to challenge the enduring forces of coloniality, cultural globalisation, and gendered marginalisation. Applying an intersectional feminist lens, I reveal her artistic oeuvre as a powerful feminist counter-narrative that actively reclaims and revitalises Setswana identity while simultaneously echoing broader Pan-African and diasporic struggles. I trace these musical connections, drawing parallels between her work and traditions as diverse as Zimbabwe's mbira spiritual music and Afro-Cuban Yoruba ceremonial songs, demonstrating how her sound is both locally grounded and globally resonant. By forging what I term a mmino-wa-Setswana aesthetic-a distinctly Tswana musical sensibility-MmaAusi not only catalyses cultural sovereignty but also delivers a potent social critique of post-colonial and contemporary societal issues. Ultimately, I position her work as a vital modelforsustaining indigenous epistemologies and linguistic heritage in an increasingly homogenising world, affirming the role of Black women artists as crucial guardians and innovators of cultural knowledge.
