GENHIS-AFRICA · Rethinking African Gender Histories: Time, Change, and the Deeper Past in Northern Mozambique

Rethinking African Gender Histories: Time, Change, and the Deeper Past in Northern Mozambique

The project ‘Rethinking African Gender Histories: Time, Change, and the Deeper Past in Northern Mozambique’ looks into new ways of reading and writing change in African gender history. It questions the current ways in which gender is connected to a teleological notion of history. This teleological single narrative categorizes African gender history into three stages: an idealized monolithic precolonial past, a disruptive and oppressive colonial period, and a postcolonial present that is centered on ‘liberation’. Focusing on the practices of Yaawo oral historians in Niassa in northern Mozambique, in this project I study the gendered ways in which deeper historical knowledge is passed from generation to generation. As my research shows, examining deeper histories and the ways in which these relate to the present allows for a more complex understanding of historical time; moreover, it offers alternative ways of thinking about gender and change in African history. The promotion of gender and social equality are cross-cutting objectives in EU development policy and co-operation. Yet contemporary understandings of gender equality and agendas for change in Africa are strongly framed by presentism. Through insight into deeper gender history and especially the relation between gender and historical change, my research can contribute to nuancing the public debates about gender and development and thus impact upon societal challenges. These issues are also of public interest to EU citizens. By bringing new perspectives into societal discussion, my research adds to the available narratives and thus enhances people’s awareness and understanding of the global gendered world around them. Moreover, this research is of relevance to the source communities and broader Mozambican society. It enriches people’s understanding of the history of the Niassa region, enhances knowledge about women and gender in Mozambican history, and furthers interest in the study of oral traditions and history. The project has a two-fold objective: (1) on the basis of the Yaawo case-study, to contribute to our understanding of female political and spiritual power in Africa’s precolonial past and the historical processes of change in the colonial and postcolonial contexts; and (2) to study how these deeper histories also echo and are reworked in the present, and thus constitute the contemporary historical experience in interaction with, for instance, more recent socialist ideas of women’s emancipation and the current development discourse on gender equality. Overall, my research proposes to open new routes in the theoretical thinking as well as the methodologies of African gender history.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз