Towards the end of our conversation, feminist author and social critic Minna Salami likens her relationship to astrology, to nationhood; “I do believe I’m a Leo, and I feel a strong connection to it. But I think it’s because from a young age we are told our stars, so I start shaping my identity around it in a way that is similar to how I shape my identity around being Nigerian or something.” It is with the same analytic and critical spirit that the Finnish-Nigerian writer approaches her life’s work. Whether it’s her feminist blog, Ms.Afropolitan where she has thoroughly pondered on the feminist project for close to 15years, or her debut book, Sensuous Knowledge that debunks the superiority of what she coins, “Euro-patriarchal knowledge,” Salami thinks and approaches her work from the space of critical wonder.
And now her second book: “Can Feminism Be African? A Most Paradoxical Question,” carries a similar spirit. It is a meditation of the presumed disconnect between feminism and Africanness, as well as a questioning of the presumption. The book is divided threefold: what it means to be African; what it means to be a feminist; and finally, what it might look like to meld these two concepts together. All three are pertinent meditations considering, firstly, the steadfast acceleration of anti-rights movements that threatens to further dehumanise women and non-gender conforming people on the continent. And secondly, the denial for a need for a movement to combat this dehumanisation; “…one of the most frequent responses I get when I mention my work as a feminist to fellow Africans: “we don’t need feminism here,” Salami writes in a caption on an Instagram post.
This is not a prescriptive book; Salami does not venture to actually answer the question that is the book’s title. In fact, readers would do well to quickly realise its rhetoric nature. Instead, Can Feminism be African? joins the expanding canon that is the cartography of African feminist theory. Salami is crafting a framework and a language for how we might explore what it means to do feminism as Africans, in Africa. Her lingo weaves in a critical analysis of the patriarchal nature of African historical narratives and contemporary, polyphonic storytelling on Africa as seen in academia and art forms. Also, and perhaps most importantly, it traces a line through the short but dynamic history of African feminism, allowing readers to recognise the triumphs and missteps alike, as well as understand where we are currently in our pursuit for freedom from patriarchal violence, and what the current time calls for us.
In this conversation, Minna Salami shares further insight into her approach as a non-dualist feminist thinker and writer as seen in her newly published book; her anxieties on criticisms of African feminism; and the many artists that have influenced her work.
Before we get to the book, another one of your brainchildren, your feminist blog, Ms.Afropolitan, turns 15 years old this year!
Yeah, next month it will be exactly 15 years.
You’ve built an online feminist archive with Ms.Afropolitan. How do you feel about that?
It has been one of the best things that has happened to me. Building that archive has been part of my own personal journey of growth and transformation and learning. I have made connections with people around the world through sharing these insights on my blog that have brought so much value to me. It has shown me how much of a need there is for these conversations, and also how much resistance there is to them. If I were to sum it up in one expression, it has been an education.
What has it been like to go through this education publicly?
Every single time I've published a post or now a book it's really nervewracking. I am a provocative thinker, I know that my ideas are out of the box. This is not some way to humble brag, I have just learned that I tend to see the world differently to most people. I'm constantly challenging myself and my feminism, and so every single time that I'm about to go public with an article or a talk or whatever it might be, I’m aware that it will be received with a variety of opinions. But I think that that's exactly the space that one wants to be in as a feminist, because feminism is challenging the the status quo. So, if as a feminist, you don't feel any sense of nervousness or anticipation, maybe you need to ask yourself why.
In both of your books you argue for the rejection of rationality as a superior way of knowing. Instead you suggest that there are other ways of knowing including emotionality that can be just as meaningful. Elaborate a little on how we can responsibly tap into emotionality as a way of knowing, against the current backdrop of sensationalism and a feeling of hopelessness among oppressed people.
Yeah, that's such a great question. This kind of worry comes up in many conversations from my previous book, and also that I've been having about this book. The thing that I want to point out is that I'm not advocating for emotionalism; I'm not saying that emotions should be superior to rationality, but rather that all of these realms inform our lives and our experience of being alive as humans, and we should not neglect one over the other. If we had what I call Sensuous Knowledge; an educational system whereby from a very young age, we started to think about things like empathy, ethics, compassion, fear, desires and imagination we would be better off. Instead we pretend they do not exist throughout our education, then we come into adult life and we cannot communicate with each other let alone solve global crises. So actually, it's about cultivating a rounded, conscientious kind of sensibility from an early age.
In many of the African feminist spaces I’ve been in, that shift towards a conscientious sensibility is sometimes categorised as a long term feminist goal and set aside from more immediate material crises. I wonder if that has been your experience as well? What do you think about it?
Definitely, I think about that all the time. African feminism needs to expand. We need to take the permission to expand it beyond the empirical and material facets of women's realities in the continent and of the continent itself, because that is kind of what keeps us so locked in those spaces. Because we're not having corresponding conversations about who we are, why we are where we are, what we want and how we want to get there. Unless we have those kinds of conversations, it becomes very challenging to actually move systems out of oppression, out of these very material consequences of oppression. This is something that I feel very strongly about and I am very much motivated by. That's why Can Feminism be African? is so conceptual, even though in every chapter I'm also thinking about concrete things. I'm not denying how important it is to think about poverty or harmful traditions or farming or all of these very material realities that African women face, I'm saying that we also need to think beyond those things. African feminism needs to also be about selfhood, about individuation, about our social imaginaries, which are places where we can conjure a lot of the transformation that we need.
I’d venture to say that it may be a symptom of patriarchal influence when feminist spaces reject making space for expansive social imaginaries as much as they do material crises.
I could not agree more, and I'm very bothered by that because often in the African feminist movement, as in many other progressive movements, we become unable to see that we are constructing knowledge in the same ways that we are resisting it. We're stuck looking at things in these binary ways, stuck in the metrics, stuck in very specific narratives that have come from the outside to harm. These very NGO related discourses are a continuation of a lot of colonial lingo, right? The argument that those are the things we need to focus on is in some sense a continuation of those colonial narratives, and we desperately need to reinvent language and reimagine how we think.
There is a chapter in the book titled ‘Harmony Feminism’ where you talk about how there are many tactics to doing feminism and that they could all be applicable in different contexts. I think it’s fair to say that in a lot of African feminist spaces, you find a lot of women with conjoining privileges from, say, class or religion who lean onto more conservative or a negotiation feminist tactics. These tactics tend to take precedence over more radical forms of feminism, leaving people who take radical positions alienated. It makes me skeptical of whether all feminist tactics are really made equal, and if the end justifies the means when it comes to harmony feminism. Is that a tension you felt at all when thinking about and writing that chapter?
I hear you and I understand you. I know that there are many tensions around this topic, or many questions. Maybe I should say, I think it depends a little bit on which entry we take into the topic. When we look at it from a kind of more localized, more microcosmic perspective, there's so many immediate people, situations, politics, that we want to act on sharply, and we don't have time to ruminate about who should be included here. Everyone should be. Everyone should have rights. Perhaps what I'm doing more is looking at it more from the outside, from a more macro perspective, in which I would argue that the reality on the continent is such that the majority of people who would even have an inclination to align themselves with the feminist cause, which is already a very small percentage, but out of that small percentage, the people who we can get on board are coming to it from this kind of harmony feminism perspective. I think if we think of the continent's well being and women's well being in a kind of long term more distanced perspective, we cannot afford to dismiss that. It is a sentiment that I would rather be in dialogue with. Also because the adversaries of feminism who would not even get as far as Harmony Feminism are so many; there’s lots of people who don't even want to talk to us, but at least with the harmony feminists, there's an entry. I think feminism is such a strong movement in Africa, I just don't want to lose contact with that space, even if I myself, as I write, don't consider myself to be a harmony feminist. Although, maybe debatable.
It’s interesting because it seems like as the movement grows, feminists in Africa not only have to negotiate living amidst patriarchy, but with the many forms of feminism.
Yeah, and I mean I use the examples of Winnie Mandela and Miriam Makeba in the book to kind of create this tension, this dichotomy, and turn them of course into icons, rather than acknowledging their full complexity. But also to show what harmony feminists have achieved and that they are part of why we're having these conversations. Many of the founding mothers of African feminism, I think we could say, were harmony feminists. I'm always very concerned and keen to not throw the baby out with the bath water. There's something there to acknowledge and to engage with.
In the book you write, “…nationalism and patriarchy go hand in hand.” I want to ask you to talk about that, because it feels pertinent considering all the ongoing resistance efforts in African countries.
Yeah, I think so much of the backlash that we're facing right now is this conflation of nationalistic spirit with feminism, which wasn't always the case in the relatively short history of African feminism. That sentence and that discussion in the book is informed by wanting to challenge that conflation in a sensitive way. I know that a lot of us feel very strongly tied to our nations, our tribes, our ethnic groups and so on. One of the discussions in the book is about how love for our people, whether we're thinking of the continent or specific countries or ethnic groups, can be shown and should be shown by and through dissent. Even when we think about personal relationships whether it's a partner or family member, if we truly are expressing love, we set boundaries, which helps them to grow. It's the same thing when it comes to nations, but instead we are expected to give this kind of uncritical love toward our nationalities. And I understand why that sentiment is there; Africa has been deprived of so much of our historical pride and we're clamoring for it. And again, going back a bit to this thing about harmony feminism, I think it's important to acknowledge that this backlash is coming from a wound. Sometimes it's just coming from pure ignorance and even evil, but most of the time, it's coming from a deep wound. But the wound is not going to be healed by more ignorance. And so to actually love our countries is to produce clarity and to disrupt narratives that are keeping us stuck in nonsensical thinking.
Another concept you describe in the book is that of individuation, which is a sort of enlightenment one gets through feminism and that if we all work towards it, it would make for collectivism and diversity, as opposed to communitarianism and group think. You describe individuation as a deeply personal endeavor, which almost goes against the sisterhood approach most of us learn when we first get into feminism. I guess I’m asking you to clarify if you think we should leave each other be and go through the journey individually, and wait to converge along the way.
No, I don't think we should have that attitude. But the reason that I don't think we should have that attitude is because of our own individual journeys, if that makes sense. If you are on a journey toward individuation, then becoming selfish and egotistical is probably going to be counterproductive to your own journey. Rather, becoming a person who is clear about reality involves love to such a great extent. It involves compassion and seeing the interconnectedness that we have as humans, women and even as feminists. We have a shared mission and purpose and spirit; there's something that unites us even in our antagonism against the patriarchy. So part of my individual journey is to have a connection with you through this conversation, for example, but it is still part of my individual journey. So there's this push and pull. I think part of the issues in our societies, at large and also within the feminist movement, is that we aren't having conversations that help each other grow. Or conversations that challenge each other from a place of critical love. So much of the communitarian thinking encourages group think and thus stagnation. I think there's something in the sisterhood narrative that has stagnated. I have grown up with that narrative, too. It means a lot to me. But I also can say that at this point, I find it a bit limiting. I would want to move, for example, to being in friendship. What does feminist friendship look like? Because sisterhood has become such a trope that people just put rules on each other, but rules do not counter patriarchy.
Yeah like a girl-code that no longer fits.
Exactly, yes. And to be honest, I would rather live in a world where we have these heuristics that we can instantly employ, rather than live in one in which the opposite is true with the bro-code or the broligarchy as people are calling it. Maybe we do need the counter tropes. But I think they may be equally lazy. I think feminism has to be this place where we're constantly challenging thought and action. My experience of African feminism has largely been that it's more expansive than many other feminist spaces, precisely because we are always challenging thought in that way. So yeah I would propose that we start maybe thinking about friendship instead of sisterhood, and what that might mean.
Your work features such a huge range of pop-cultural references in addition to academic ones, which is apt considering how much you write about valuing varying modes of knowledge. Tell me a little about your relationship with pop-culture and art.
Yeah, those realms are really important to me. It has to do with the denial or the lack of access to the dominant forms of knowledge. I mean, not so much the case anymore because now, I do have access to academia and to a certain mode of communication and dialogue. But from a very young age I was drawn to imbibing knowledge from other formats. I see it as a gift to have this kind of polyphonic sensibility, because it is focused on what is truly felt and realized, rather than what is propagated from the outside. If I'm watching a film and it gives me knowledge and insight about a political or philosophical issue, then that is what it did, and that is the source. Whereas our education would want to say, you can't get it from there, go and find a citation from some serious academic book. But that would be a lie, because I got it from the film. So, I'm going to use the film as my source.
It’s interesting considering the conversations around anti-intellectualism in African spaces, because I think we still downplay just how much art and pop culture are an accessible way for people to intellectually engage with these themes.
I think this somehow ties to your first question about sensationalism and emotions, in the sense that there's some people who maybe, excellently, can build theory and knowledge based on pop culture. But I'm always very much about the synthesis, the integration of different forms of knowing. So I'm never advocating that poetry is better than science, or pop culture is better than theory. I think if anything, I have a strong affinity for producing knowledge through theory and conceptualization. And in some sense this book is a call for more theory, because I think we're living in a time where thanks to social media and this euro-patriarchal narrative that has violated our lives in so many ways, a lot of people are glorifying only thinking about knowledge from the body or from music or films, but that can also stay on this superficial level. I do think that we need robust intellectualism, and that includes theory and concepts and philosophy as well as pop culture.
That’s interesting. Who are some writers from any realm, art or theory, who have influenced your writing? I know you spoke highly of Lauryn Hill in Sensuous Knowledge but I wonder who else.
Oh, I love this question because it’s such a mix. There’s someone like Chimamanda Adichie. I love her writing style as a storyteller. And then someone like Pumla Dineo Gqola for their sharp critical thinking and punchy theorization. I am a big fan of people like Teju Cole and John Berger for their wise, slow rhythm and pace. And then, of course, all the revolutionary writing by Aime Cesare or Frantz Fanon, and the kind of Pan Africanists of the independence era. I felt like this book wanted to be in conversation with that canon. This is the book that I would have written as an African feminist in the 60s and 70s to disrupt the Pan African canon, but still wanting to be in that tradition. And then a lot of wonderful artists like Gladys Mgudlandlu that I mentioned in the book, in the chapter on individuation. I love her art, it just stops me in my tracks every single time I see her piece. And they're so simple, but so full of meaning at the same time. Yeah, I mean, the list is endless, to be honest. I cite Tyla in the book, too. I love her music.
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