TY - JOUR
T1 - Can you really see through a squint? Theoretical underpinnings in Ama Ata Aidoo's Our Sister Killjoy
AU - Sterling, Cheryl
PY - 2010/3
Y1 - 2010/3
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
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U2 - 10.1177/0021989409359645
DO - 10.1177/0021989409359645
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:77953587428
SN - 0021-9894
VL - 45
SP - 131
EP - 150
JO - Journal of Commonwealth Literature
JF - Journal of Commonwealth Literature
IS - 1
ER -