[spectre] New podcast: Professor Oyèwùmi examines the ways in which universalism in academia distorts our understanding of African cultures, especially in relation to race and gender

[Radio Web MACBA]

New podcast:

In this podcast, Professor Oyèwùmi
<https://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia/sonia-303-oyeronke-oyewumi> talks about
age, seniority, and respect, about unscrupulousness and academia,
dispossession and spirituality. She considers the oxymoron of the notion of
“single mother” from the point of view of Yoruba culture, and she also
notes how observance of community practices from non-Western cultures may
be an unnecessary step as we face the planetary challenges to come.

https://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia/sonia-303-oyeronke-oyewumi

The work of Professor Oyèrónké Oyèwùmi (b. Nigeria, 1957)
<https://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia/sonia-303-oyeronke-oyewumi> examines the
ways in which universalism in academia distorts our understanding of
African cultures, especially in relation to race and gender: anatomical
materiality, scientific visuality, and the emphasis on genitality result in
an exaggeration of differences. Professor Oyèwùmi looks at how this matrix
was historically imposed on the culture and worldview of the Yoruba, whose
language, for example, did not stipulate the existence of sons or
daughters, wives or husband, and whose deities always display a fluid
identity. Going beyond gender as an abstract cultural construct, Oyèwùmi
begins to identify the space-time coordinates in which the construct
emerged, and to recognise the impossibility of disentangling it from openly
racist and colonial processes.

In this podcast, Professor Oyèrónké Oyèwùmi talks about age, seniority, and
respect, about unscrupulousness and academia, dispossession and
spirituality. She considers the oxymoron of the notion of “single mothers”
from the point of view of Yoruba culture, and describes the process by
which children choose their mothers before they are born. She also notes
how observance of community practices from non-Western cultures may be an
unnecessary step as we face the planetary challenges to come.


Timeline

00:01 Thinking beyond the individual: the first couple
02:15 The invention of women
10:27 Writing a dissertation in Berkeley
18:53 Gender is differently constructed
23:10 New tools and the colonialism of knowledge
28:47 Genderism: shifts in the vocabularies
31:13 Seniority as tool
38:22 Gendered African art & motherhood as an art form
43:30 A spiritual category

E/N/J/O/Y !!!
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