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Feminism represents the battle for equal access to opportunities in society for males and females and, therefore, a necessary struggle for social justice. It is sometimes the case, however, that feminism degenerates into a battle against men, a tendency Mawuli Adzei refers to as "radical separatist feminism" (47). In African literature, this standpoint is reflected in the abject degradation of male characters, who are usually presented as the oppressors of women, enemies of women, barriers to women's progress, and only without whom women would be able to achieve their highest potentials in society (Adzei 47). Against this backdrop, and using El Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero as a primary text, this paper, while acknowledging the validity and necessity of the crusade for gender equity in African societies, contests the logic fueling male-bashing by foregrounding certain often-ignored variables in this debate: first, the faulty homogenization/essentialization of men and women (and by extension, the neglection of intersectionality) and, second, the constraints certain cultural expectations pose to men. I conclude by highlighting Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's point that—because feminism is potentially liberating for both women and men—we can all be feminists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Matthew Omelsky has recently coined the term "African Anthropocene" to describe how the intertwined crises wrought by global capitalism and man-made ecological disaster have disproportionately affected the African continent. This paper discusses a short story collection by the Ugandan writer Dilman Dila, A Killing in the Sun (2014), as one instance of an African aesthetics that uniquely registers and responds to this dual crisis. I focus in particular on the "vampire story" that opens this collection, arguing that Dila not only reinvents, but, in critical ways, "mutates" the canonical Euro-American vampire figure. In reimagining the aristocratic European vampire as a mutant, genetically modified swarm of mosquitos, Dila's story suggests new, environmental forms of the monstrous emerging at the confluence of ecological catastrophe and corporate neocolonialism. At the same time, I show how Dila's fiction draws on the history of colonialism in Africa in imagining modes of survival within this vampiric ecology. In order to unpack the political implications of what I call Dila's "mutational aesthetics," I trace Dila's attempts to imagine forms of human-nonhuman entanglement that delink from a Western episteme and its ideological carapace of "the human," providing instead post-humanist visions of survival and refuge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1960s in Africa are usually described by historians and political scientists as the era of the "wind of change" because it was during this period that most African countries gained political independence from their colonial masters. In fact, this "wind of change" gave African countries the legitimacy and legality to be the custodians of their own progress and destiny. However, the African continent since then has been a furnace for social revolution, ethnic conflict, and martial dissension. The reasons for this political uproar in most postcolonial African states are wide and varied. However, a principal reason is that the ruling African elites have confiscated the sovereignty of the postcolonial African state for their own individual benefits thereby leaving the masses in desperate conditions. This tragic situation is reflected in the literary and cultural discourses of post-1960 Africa as seen in the novels of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Alobwed'Epie. Using Ngũgĩ's Matigari and Alobwed'Epie's The Death Certificate , this article analyzes the relationship between postcolonial African citizens and their political leaders and also shows how these leaders manipulate the dynamics of political or sovereign powers to the detriment of development in their societies. The article supports the view that the political leadership of the postcolonial fictional states, as seen in the novels, is the archetype of the misuse and abuse of state power in contemporary Africa. Using social semiotics as a theoretical paradigm, the paper affirms that postcolonial Africa is unprogressive, fragmented, and dismembered because of the mismanagement of political power for personal aggrandizement. This mismanagement of state powers has exacerbated the politicization of ethnicity in postcolonial Africa and is also responsible for the political tyranny, corruption, and ethnic conflict for which most contemporary African states have been noted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the increasing depth and quality of research related to photography in African contexts, little attention has been paid to African framings of environmental concerns. This paper focuses on select works by David Goldblatt, Santu Mofokeng, Mikhael Subotzky, Zwelethu Mthtethwa, and Pieter Hugo of South Africa, George Osodi and Charles Okereke of Nigeria, and Nyaba Leon Ouedraogo of Burkina Faso, to promote consideration of the visual strategies by which unsustainable environmental practices in African contexts are addressed, with a critical awareness of the circuits in which these images have been produced and circulated. Contexts of production and presentation profoundly influence how these images have been positioned as representative of an artist's style or emblematic of an environmental cause. Emphasis within this analysis is placed on landscapes, particularly those affected by dumping-the accumulation of e-waste, litter, asbestos, and other hazardous waste-to examine the contradictions and synergies between works with resonant visual subjects, to highlight the central role of landscape as an expressive device in shaping a nascent environmental discourse in the arenas of African art and visual culture, and to tease out factors influencing how these photographs and their environmental content are embraced or overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]