Can you really see through a squint? Theoretical underpinnings in Ama Ata Aidoo's Our Sister Killjoy

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Abstract

Ama Ata Aidoo's Our Sister Killjoy is read as an inversion of the colonial travel narrative, addressing the continued asymmetrical power relations between Europe and Africa. The paper posits Sissie, its focal character, as a site of theoretical transformations, engaging with issues of racial subjectivity, sexuality and political positionality in relation to the neocolonial African state. It further argues that Aidoo situates a performative self in the text through an interrogatory narrative voice that succeeds in both deforming the novelistic pattern and participating in the critique of Western subjectivity and hegemonic feminist positioning, while inserting a resistant feminist ideology into Pan-Africanist discourse to re-envision the role of African women in Africa's development.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)131-150
Number of pages20
JournalJournal of Commonwealth Literature
Volume45
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2010

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Literature and Literary Theory

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