Bibliograph

Naked agency, genital cursing and biopolitics in Africa, Naminata Diabate

Type

Label

Naked agency, genital cursing and biopolitics in Africa, Naminata Diabate

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Illustrations

mapsillustrations

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Naked agency

Nature of contents

dictionariesbibliography

Responsibility statement

Naminata Diabate

Series statement

Theory in forms

Sub title

genital cursing and biopolitics in Africa

Summary

"Baring genitalia, or the threat thereof, as a form of protest has appeared with increasing frequency across sub-Saharan African countries since the 1990s. Naked agency provides a conceptual framework for reading African women's "defiant disrobing" not as a stable, singular event, but rather as part of an ongoing struggle between victimhood and sovereignty. An act that makes claims to ritual and political power that is nevertheless performed out of abjection and vulnerability to state- and locally-sanctioned death, naked protest is fundamentally biopolitical, but also offers forms of agency that trouble the liberal subject. Diabate therefore offers ways to understand protests as situated performances. Diabate's analysis primarily considers media accounts of naked protests, from films to autobiographical accounts, novels to fine art, and beyond, bringing into focus the work cultural production does in representing naked protest. Her book situates the particularities of each instance of women's naked protest within the interactions of the indigenous, the local, and the global, emphasizing the contingent, collective, and triumphant forms of agency produced through insurgent nakedness." -- Provided by publisher

Table Of Contents

Introduction: Exceptional nakedness -- Restriction -- Scene 1. Exceptional conditions and darker shades of biopolitics -- Scene 2. Dobsonville and the question of autonomy -- Cooptation -- Scene 3. Africanizing nakedness as (self-) instrumentalization -- Scene 4. In the name of national interest -- Scene 5. Film as instrumental and interpretive lens -- Repression -- Scene 6. Secularizing genital cursing and rhetorical backlash -- Scene 7. Epistemic ignorance and menstrual rags in Paris -- Scene 8. Murderous reactions: reading defiant disrobing -- Epilogue: Defiant disrobing going viral

Creator