The problems and intersectional politics of "#BeingFemaleinNigeria"

In June 2015, Nigerian women on Twitter convened around the hashtag “#BeingFemaleinNigeria” (#BFIN) to represent their experiences, observations, and critiques of patriarchal oppression in Nigeria. This article parses the content and internal politics of #BFIN as a Nigerian feminist hashtag campaign. Given that there is no singular Nigerian female experience, and that experience is not unmediated, the article asks: as represented by participants in the #BFIN campaign, what are the issues involved in being a woman in Nigeria, and for whom exactly, for Nigerian women occupying what kinds of discursive-material subject positions? Based on a thematic and intersectional analysis of 700 #BFIN tweets, I argue that the predominant representations are of the voice, experiences, and concerns of a type of subject that I call “the empowered Nigerian woman,” an educated, capacious, and confident urban career woman belonging to the country’s higher socio-economic strata. The campaign made urgently important claims about mundane sexist attitudes and practices that impede this type of Nigerian woman. However, marked by a lack of intersectional consciousness, the predominant story of the campaign was unrepresentative of the problems and experiences of the vast majority of Nigerian women

Author interview: Q and A with Dr Simidele Dosekun on fashioning postfeminism: spectacular femininity and transnational culture

In this author interview, we speak to Dr Simidele Dosekun about her new book, Fashioning Postfeminism: Spectacular Femininity and Transnational Culture, which reflects on ideas about postfeminist self-fashioning and subjectivity through interviews with women in Lagos, Nigeria, who practise a spectacularly feminine style

For Western girls only? Postfeminism as transnational culture

Much of the literature on post-feminism concerns the “Western” world and variously conceptualizes post-feminism as “Western culture.” This article argues that, as a result, feminist cultural scholars have not sufficiently imagined, theorized or empirically researched the possibility of post-feminism in non-Western cultural contexts. By briefly reviewing what has been said in the literature about post-feminism and the non-West, and by putting this in dialogue with transnational feminist cultural scholarship, this article makes a case for a transnational analytic and methodological approach to the critical study of post-feminism. It argues that such an approach provides an understanding of post-feminism as a transnationally circulating culture, and thus can better account for the fact that the culture interpellates not only women in the West but also others elsewhere. The article concludes by outlining what it means and could afford feminist cultural scholars to work with a new conceptual view of post-feminism as transnational culture

We live in fear, we feel very unsafe: Imagining and fearing rape in South Africa

This article explores the meanings of rape for 15 women at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa, who claim to have not experienced rape. It is based upon qualitative interviews with these women and offers a discursive analysis of their talk. The article shows that the women tend to distance the actual occurrence and threat of rape. At the same time, they assume a natural vulnerability to rape with the result that they imagine and fear it as always possible in the course of their daily lives. The article reconstructs the ways in which the women's imagination and fear of rape adversely impacts upon their sense of safety, agency and belonging in South Africa today. Illustrating the power of discourses to shape both subjective and social realities, it concludes that feminist research and activism must pay attention to the discursive dimensions of the rape crisis in South Africa

"We live in fear, we feel so unsafe": the imagination and fear of rape in South Africa

This article explores the meanings of rape in South Africa for fifteen women at the University of Cape Town who claim to have not experienced rape. It is based upon qualitative interviews with these women and offers a discursive analysis of their talk. The article shows that the women tend to distance the actual occurrence and threat of rape. At the same time, they assume a natural vulnerability to rape, with the result that they imagine and fear it as always possible in the course of their daily lives. The article reconstructs the ways in which the women’s imagination and fear of rape adversely impacts upon their sense of safety, agency and belonging in South Africa today. Illustrating the power of discourses to shape both subjective and social realities, it concludes that feminist research and activism must pay attention to the discursive dimensions of the rape crisis in South Africa

The playful and privileged Africanicity of luxury @AlaraLagos

This chapter is concerned with the performative content and constellations of luxury, and with the 'atmosphere' that ensues, at Alára, a new luxury store in Lagos, Nigeria

Constructing rape, imagining self : discourses of rape and gender subjectivity in South Africa

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 130-142).This thesis explores the meanings and impact of rape in South Africa for fifteen women located at the University of Cape Town (UCT) who claim to have never experienced rape. Drawing upon feminist post-structuralist theories of subjectivity and taking a discursive analytic approach, the thesis explores how these women construct the phenomenon of rape in their society and thereby imagine themselves. It is based upon empirical data collected through qualitative interviews. Analysis of this data shows that the women discursively construct rape as highly prevalent in South Africa but ordinarily distant from their personal lives, concerning then 'the Other.' However, it is argued that the women also construct themselves as gendered and embodied subjects inherently vulnerable to male violence such as rape. This means that the fear and imagination of rape are not absent from their daily lives, but rather shape their sense of safety, agency, sexuality and citizenship in South Africa. Because these fifteen women deny personal experiences of rape, the thesis shows that they draw on public discourses and their subjective imaginations to theorise rape and rape crisis in post-apartheid South Africa

[Introduction] The politics and aesthetics of luxury in Africa

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Luminance and the moralization of black women’s luxury consumption in South Africa

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