power and authority of males in a society. Patriarchy can also refer to the power of fathers within families (Cruikshank, 2009).
1.4.17 Prejudice
According to Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2008), prejudice could be defined as an unfair and unreasonable opinion or feeling, especially when formed without enough thought or knowledge.
1.4.18 Post-Colonialism (With or Without a hyphen)
In the literature, the term to post-colonialism (post-colonial theory or post-orientalism) tends to be used to refer to an intellectual discourse that holds together a set of theories or philosophies, films, political science, literature ans “cultures affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonisation to the present day” (Aschcroft et al., 1989:2).
Furthermore, Mogoboya (2011: 32) states: ‘as a term, post-colonialism comes from the Latin words post, which means after, and colonia, which means to settle. In other words, post-colonialism concentrates on Africa after the end of the reign of the colonial settlers.’
Aschcroft et al. (1989: 2) note: ‘all cultures affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonisation to the present day.’ In addition, post-colonial theory attempts to dispatch the ordeal of countries that were formerly colonised by Europe. Eegunlusi (2017: 15) maintains: ‘after independence, a major crisis that persists as a result of the governance pattern of British colonial administration is that of Nigerian tribes’
unceasing agitation for unreserved pursuit of tribal interests and, covertly, pursuits of self-interests by those in power.’
1.5.1.1 Afrocentricity
Afrocentricity is a strand of post-colonial theory whose focus is on the African continent, meaning centered on or originating in Africa or African cultures. It embraces the ideology of Africanism. Asante (2009: 2) states: ‘the Afrocentric paradigm is a revolutionary shift in thinking proposed as a constructural adjustment to black disorientation, decenteredness, and lack of agency.’
Rafapa (2005: 11) asserts: ‘Afrocentrism refers to an attitude that directly combats European hegemonic discourse in order to negate its inherent Eurocentrism as a pole diametrically opposed to that associated with Africanists.’ Afrocentrists such as Asante ask the question, ‘What would African people do if there were no white people?’ Moreover, Asante (2009: 1) notes:
Afrocentricity is a paradigm based on the idea that African people should reassert a sense of agency in order to achieve sanity. During the l960s a group of African American intellectuals in the newly-formed Black Studies departments at universities began to formulate novel ways of analysing information. In some cases, these new ways were called looking at information from ‘a black perspective’ as opposed to what had been considered the ‘white perspective’ of most information in the American academy.
From Asante’s general characteristics of Afrocentricity, the latter seems to challenge colonial attributes in Africa. This is because the theory of Afrocentricity addresses the odds that threaten Africa and colonialism is singled out as a major crisis that Africans
have ever confronted. Thus, Mahasha (2014: 20) asserts: ‘Afrocentricity aims to challenge social ills such as racism, group marginalisation, prejudice, genocide and subjugation of black people by Europeans among other injustices.’ Asante in his research on Afrocentricity uses fives general characteristics of the Afrocentric method to corroborate the full-blown unfolding of this theory:
1. The Afrocentric method considers that no phenomena can be apprehended adequately without locating it first. Phenomena must be studied and analysed in relationship to psychological time and space. It must always be located. This is the only way to investigate the complex interrelationships of science and art, design and execution, creation and maintenance, generation and tradition, and other areas.
1. The Afrocentric method considers phenomena to be diverse, dynamic, and in motion and therefore it is necessary for a person to accurately note and record the location of phenomena even in the midst of fluctuations. This means that the investigator must know where he or she is standing in the process.
3. The Afrocentric method is a form of cultural criticism that examines etymological uses of words and terms in order to know the source of an author’s location. This allows us to intersect ideas with actions and actions with ideas on the basis of what is pejorative and ineffective and what is creative and transformative at the political and economic levels.
4. The Afrocentric method seeks to uncover the masks behind the rhetoric of power, privilege, and position in order to establish how principal myths create place. The method enthrones critical reflection that reveals the perception of monolithic power as nothing but the projection of a cadre of adventurers.
5. The Afrocentric method locates the imaginative structure of a system of economics, bureau of politics, policy of government, expression of cultural form in the attitude, direction, and language of the phenomenon, be it text, institution, personality, interaction, or event.
(Adapted from Asante, 1998)
1.5.2 Feminism
Frank (1984: 35) states: ‘feminism traverses a broad spectrum oscillating from the sociological, prescriptive and polemical to the formalist, rarefied and aesthetic.’
Furthermore, feminism is perhaps a paradigm that seeks to remedy the odds against women in societies and conscientise the masses about the importance of women’s rights and responsibilities.
In the light of the term feminism, it seems to have developed from the word female. On the basis of the latter, the movement and theory of feminism was established to represent the female figure. Nkealah (2011: 51) asserts: ‘feminism becomes a multifaceted concept that could easily be applied to different texts and contexts and can be appropriated and redefined to acquire meaning in any given culture.’ Women who advocate the theory of feminism call themselves feminists. In most cases, they are clamouring for equal rights with men. Feminism theory has several purposes such as:
1. to understand the power differential between men and women.
2. to understand women’s oppression—how it evolve, how it changes over time, how it is related to other forms of oppression .
3. how to overcome oppressions.
The concept of feminism is vast and involves various kinds of features such as Liberal feminism, Radical feminism, Ecofeminism, Multicultural and Global Feminism, Marxist Feminism, Socialist Feminism, Psychoanalytic Feminism, Existentialist Feminism, Postmodern Feminism. To point out some of the feminists’ view:
Marilyn Frye: The Possibility of Feminist Theory
The project of feminist theory is to write a new encyclopaedia. Its title: The World, According to Women.… What feminist theory is about, to a great extent, is identifying those forces…which maintain the subordination of women to men.…Our game is pattern recognition. Patterns sketched in broad strokes make sense of experience, but it is not a single or uniform
sense. They make our different experiences intelligible in different ways…Our epistemological issues have to do with the strategies of discovering patterns and articulating them effectively, judging the strength and scope of patterns.
(Adapted from Collins, 2001) 1.5.3 Historical-biographical
This compound term Historical-biographical is made up of two adjectives, Historical which describes past event and biographical, which means factual. Mogoboya (2011:
30) believes that the Historical-Biographical approach argues that factors out-side the text has a direct influence on it. In other words, writers mirror their lives and times in the context of their texts. On logical grounds, there seems to be a compelling reason to claim that historical-biographical approach questions the authenticity of an account of something or someone.
1.6 THE PURPOSE OF THE STUDY