The Colonial State and Postcolonial Feminist Predicaments.

It has been observed that the task of imagining and building African feminism as a community of theory and praxis "is very hard work." Alongside this, it could be argued that a decolonial approach to African feminism is even harder work. This is, in part, because colonial knowledges are built upon the erasure of the histories and knowledges of most of the world. The work, therefore, of reconstituting what has been erased or vulgarised is actually more difficult than what it took to put together the colonial canon. My present contribution to these debates addresses this decolonial predicament through a critique of structural violence. My particular concern is with the relationship between the modern state and gendered violence, and, to some extent, the ways in which the problem of care (the contemporary reproductive crisis) emerges within this structural relationship. The paper examines the emergence of this tension through the lens of the colonial state in Africa and its implications for feminist organising in Africa in the contemporary period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]