African women, resistance cultures and cultural resistances

Abstract

abstract African descendent women have a long ‘herstory’ of engaging in multiple forms of collective and individual resistance with expressions of patriarchy and other forms of injustice. According to anthropologist Filomena Steady (1993), African women's distinctive ‘female modes of resistance’ are often institutionalised in traditional African cultural systems. The multiple and varied expressions of African women's resistance includes the political and transformational uses of cultural practices, even those with seemingly patriarchal overtones. In this article, I will examine African women's cultures of resistance and political uses of culture in a range of contexts. I argue that these patterns of resistance have served as transformative praxis which can be drawn from in current anti-patriarchal and counter-hegemonic feminist struggles. The article will focus particularly on African and African diasporan women's collective expressions of autonomy, agency and transnationality.