Review: The Invention of Women by Dr. Oyeronke Oyewumi
Dr. Oyeronke Oyewumi’s 1994, “The Invention of Women: Making An African Sense of Western Gender Discourse,” is a book well worth your time and provides great insight into the nuances of European domination through her critique of the geographical origins of gender. If it doesn’t make this claim outright, “The Invention of Women” essentially argues that gender has been as important in the colonizing of the Oyo people (a people in the area today known as “Nigeria” and the people of Oyewumi) as Whiteness and, by extension, the colonizing of the African mind. Using linguistic evidence, several key interviews, and extensive reading of African and Western sources, Oyewumi explains gender as a Greco-European notion of a biologically rooted, distinct way of being in which those who are anatomically “woman” are an inferior version of the normal way of being human, which is “man.” In this way, gender is critical to the colonization of the Oyo people because it left behind a dividing hierarchy and a devastating theft of power and position of “woman.” Oyewumi argues gender, specifically the concept of “woman,” is a construct of social meanings that position “women” as a category below “man,” and this category is essential to the oppression of those whom she terms “ana-females” (anatomically female) first within Western cultures and then exported with deeply harmful consequences to her Oyo people. Oyewumi argues gender displaces the previous emphasis on age and trade among Oyo people so that power becomes “ana-male” centric and reproduces the logic and social organization of its English colonizers within the community.
“The Invention of Women” argues that Western feminism’s claim that gender categories are universal and timeless, which she sums up as “in the beginning there was gender,” is false and another way European culture tries to universalize its particular history and culture. Instead, Oyewumi argues that the subjugated position of women in Greek/European Western culture belongs to a culturally specific tradition. What is particularly compelling is her point that this “invention of woman” is an expression of a deeper Greek/European “biologic” or “biodeterministic” view that “biology is destiny.” Sexism, racism, and the general notion of “royal blood” are placed as expressions of this deeper framework of bio determinism, a term, apparently very common to feminism, but was new to me.
Explaining the logic of gender as Greco-European, Oyewumi argues the terms “woman” and “man” cannot be imposed on Yoruba history before the arrival of the English because names do not designate gender and so a name like “Shango” does not tell us the anatomical sex of that person even if today that name is read as ana-male. Thus, Oyewumi offers “ana-male” and “ana-female” to explain that in Oyo their terms for what we are “simply” naming as “woman” or “man” were actually simply describing the associated reproductive organs of the two groups. Oyewumi, does not address intersex or people expressing the anatomical organs of both sexes. Continuing to break down “biodeterminism” and its roots in the superficial, Oyewumi has many insights including what a specific phrase like “worldview” reveals about the West’s preoccupation with the superficial and sight as the key sense of the five senses. Oyewumi offers that when talking about Yoruba culture, the term should be “world-sense” because it is not what can be seen that is most important, but what one senses, and that, of the five senses, hearing might be most important.
Some critiques have pointed out that Oyewumi is relying too heavily on a narrow base of evidence, and as a member of royalty, she doesn’t have a good sense of what a broader spectrum of Oyo women have experienced. I think this is fair and Dr. Oyewumi doesn’t address how her community position gives her a more significant stake in defending the society. Proving that there was no concept of any kind of difference between ana-males and ana-females outside of physical characteristics was a steep hill that I am not sure she climbed. What I found intriguing but needing more development was her argument of the lack of relevance of gender in the veneration of Orisha or the conscious forces of nature that can be called upon to aid us, our families, and communities in this journey of life. Oyewumi points to the fact that names are not specific to ana-males or ana-women, so there is no way to know if a name like “Shango” or “Aganju” was initially a King and male. The lack of gender identification in names does seem an important insight into the Yoruba cultural framework and the idea that gender is a cultural imposition has all kinds of implications for how Yoruba derived practice of Lucumi is practiced in the U.S. today although I understand that Oyewumi has been criticized on the basis that she is not initiated into these traditions. Oyewumi spends little time on the spiritual practice implications of patriarchy, so see Teresa Washington’s “The Architects of Existence: Yoruba Cosmology, Ontology, and Orature” for a much deeper look at that topic. However, I do think she creates space to consider that a key element of African-centered practice is the attention given to the “sight” that comes from our “Ori” (our inner head or spiritual guide) in Lucumi or our “3rd Eye” in Khamitic spiritual practice.
I did find myself wanting Oyewumi to gesture or allude to some of the connections between patriarchy and capitalism. In this way, complementing Oyewumi’s work is the work of Friedrich Engels and Cheikh Anta Diop. In “The Origin of Family, Private Property and the State,” Engels makes the connections between patriarchy and the development of capitalism but doesn’t name patriarchy’s distinctive Greek/European origins. Cheikh Anta Diop makes this case in “The Cultural Unity of Black Africa” that African culture was fundamentally matriarchal and that Greek/Aryan patriarchal and its patriarchy was expressed as the value of private property passed from father to son. Private property and patriarchy become dominant Western cultural characteristics and in this way, even the term popularized and expanded upon by Cedric Robinson, who suggests“racial capitalism” doesn’t fully explain our political economy, which might better be named “racially gendered capitalism”. Interestingly, Robinson is thanked in the Acknowledgments of “The Invention of Women” for his contributions to drafts. For more on patriarchy's ancient origins and aims as replacing a whole matriarchal system, also see “When God Was A Woman” by Merlin Stone.
Still, even though I agree that Oyewumi doesn’t fully make the case that there were wholly different frameworks for what it means to be ana-male or ana-female, i.e. no gender whatsoever, in pre-colonial Oyo culture, she does an excellent job challenging the idea of gender as a universal, non-culturally bound practice. Plus her argument that patriarchy, i.e, male dominance over women, and manhood as dominance, including over other men, is as dangerous as Whiteness and, inside her Oyo community, continues to weaken the community fundamentally. European colonialism’s impact is clear in the way she points out how it is erasing ana-women from the historical record which is being re-written with the presumption that behind all great activity were men. Returning to the religious discussion for a moment, this can be seen in how “Oba” is now often translated as “king” when a more accurate translation would be “majesty,” or how “Olodumare,” which roughly translates as “God” is described as “him” with no basis in the actual language.
“The Invention of Women”, along with some of the other books mentioned, opens up space for an African Centeredness that is committedly anti-patriarchal and to oppose patriarchy as strongly as it opposes European Supremacy, even if capitalism could have gotten a closer look for its origins in patriarchy. This change would greatly strengthen African Centeredness as a framework capable of engaging what the Black Alliance for Peace names Pan-European, white supremacist, capitalist/colonialist patriarchy. Oyewumi’s naming of patriarchy as the Trojan Horse of Eurocentricity invites a practice of it that can correct the anti-African named, but not ungrounded criticism, of “hoteps” that links African-centered practice with patriarchy. So, if you’ve not yet given “Invention of Women” a read it’s not an easy one, but very much worth the effort!
