Abstract
This article engages with the notion of Ndembu traditional eco-masculinities which was conceptualised in a framework of sacrifice as ground for manliness. I utilised this view as hermeneutical point of departure for reconceptualising African Christian masculinities that are ecologically sensitive. Framed within theodecolonial imagination, the article suggests a reinterpretation of the notion of Christian sacrifice in dialogue with Ndembu notion as a theological model for constructing African Christian eco-masculinities for promoting gender and nature justice.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: African men have been accused of being ecologically impotent by some African ecofeminist theologians. This article investigates how through colonialism Ndembu men were alienated from nature. The article brings into dialogue various perspectives from anthropology, ecological, decoloniality, African religion and African theological approaches.
Highlights
Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: African men have been accused of being ecologically impotent by some African ecofeminist theologians
I am not arguing that all African ecofeminist theologians ‘think that ecofeminism consists of the romanticisation and reproduction of the belief that women are “closer to nature”’ (Twine n.d) or that women and nature are connected through oppression by men, but to challenge some African ecofeminisms that appear to be brilliant ideas but on close examination are nothing but intellectual mimicries which are either eisegesis or good mimicking of dominant theories and knowledge in pro-Western academy (Dei 2012)
Through analysing Ndembu traditional hunting rituals, this article aims to show how the current African ecofeminist struggle with ecological crisis, interconnected with oppression of African women, is linked to colonial eco-epistemic injustice in which colonial categories deeply rooted in Enlightenment thought and its androcentric scientific view of reality was exported to African people in the disguise of universal knowledge
Summary
Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: African men have been accused of being ecologically impotent by some African ecofeminist theologians. To some African ecofeminist theologians, nature and masculinities appear to be opposites and they have taken the woman-nature connection as a flip side of the men-culture connection (Chirongoma 2005; Kamaraa 2007; Masenya 2010; Phiri 1996; Rusinga & Maposa 2010; Siwila 2014) This seems to reflect the legacy of Western colonial dualisms. I am arguing that the so-called indigenous knowledge system in its current form bears a conspicuous and malicious imperial and colonial imprint of domination and white male hegemony These colonial masculinities suggest that in some African societies, alternative masculinities existed in which the concept of gender was derived from African material and social environments. 1.The concept of nature is used as an overarching notion encompassing such concepts as ecology, creation and environment
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