TOWARDS UTOPIA: FEMALISM IN CHIOMA OPARA’S HER MOTHER’S DAUGHTER
The reality of binary sexual streams in human configuration is laced with intrigues, subjugations, revolutions and revisions. Over the years, the drawn-out negative influence of patriarchy has elicited feminist consciousness with discernable quality of protestation of male oppression and female individuation. This protestation gave rise to a motley of radical feminist stances amongst Western female intellectuals (beginning from the last quarter of the 18th century) that sought vigorously for its eradication. Birthed in the murky waters of Africanist adaptations to the radical liberal feminist principles of the west, Chioma Opara’s femalism “foregrounds the body while applying psychoanalytical criticism in its negation of the gendered subjectivity deemed as culturally and socially constructed.” In deconstructing extant Western and African shades of feminism, Opara carved a niche for herself by expostulating aspects of some brands, while integrating aspects of others. The resultant hybrid?some sort of eclectic phenomenon, is what she termed femalism. This essay identifies that the addition of femalism into the nomenclature of African women’s literary quest for female emancipation, is stoutly heralded as a potent genre. It notes that in spite of its wide acceptation, femalism falls within the cast of Opara’s predecessors’ genres: idealistic and chimerical. It concludes by exploring how Opara’s coinage?femalism, shares in the ambivalence that has characterised African feminism generally?a sort of melancholic attraction to an object of impossible possibility.
Keywords: chioma, daughter, femalism, mother’s, opara’s, utopia