![\"Minna](\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20140129155422im_\/http:\/\/www.africlub.net\/awdf\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Minna.jpg\")
<\/p>\n[This is a multi-part post. To read part 1 please click here]<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2019The Danger of A Single Story\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cMany stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n
~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie<\/p>\n
I remember the first time I read \u201cHalf the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide\u201d a book written by the New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn, I couldn\u2019t help but reflect on the words of the great African writer and educator Chinua Achebe who once so eloquently said: \u201cIf you don\u2019t like someone\u2019s story, write your own.\u201d Reading about Kristof\u2019s most recent jaunt to Mali where he writes: \u201cIt\u2019s time for my annual win-a-trip journey, in which I take a university student with me on a reporting trip to Africa.\u201d You know what \u201ca reporting trip to Africa means\u201d: road blocks and jittery soldiers, militants, Islamists, fear, thank god for the French, killing, and, best of all, hunger,\u201d[1] my mind also meanders to the words of the popular Nigerian feminist writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie whose TED Talk \u201cThe Danger of a Single Story\u201d became an instant internet sensation as she reminded her audience: \u201cThe single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.\u201d[2] I reflect further on the ways African women have been represented in the mainstream Western media imagination \u2013 the way African women have come to be portrayed as helpless creatures wavering wistfully in the dangerously hot harmattan heat waiting for used underwear to arrive from Europe and promises of new clitorises from white American doctors. The ways in which the gargantuan effects of power and patriarchy play out in many of these post-colonial scripts could not be any more stark. These single stories of African women are disempowering and reductive and are created for the consumption of the west rather than for any real social change.<\/p>\n
And therein lies the power and potential of popular culture to recognize and critique the dominant representations that exist in the mainstream and to provide platforms to tell different stories, first-hand stories, African stories. What popular culture provides is a means to shift the discourse \u2013 to tell more complete stories. Stories of the increasing violence experienced by South African lesbians, but also stories about the mothers and fathers who love and accept them; Stories of the community members that protect and advocate for them rejecting the idea that homosexuality is somehow \u2018unAfrican\u2019; Stories of the people, by the people.<\/p>\n
\u2018Pop Culture as a means of resistence?<\/p>\n
Today, there a multitude of online social spaces and platforms being curated by young Africans seeking both to transform existing narratives and to raise awareness about social justice issues at the same time. Popular media platforms such as Arise Magazine, dynamicafrica, AfroPop Worldwide, AfriPOP! Mag, OkayAfrica, and MyAfricaIs that spotlight the latest in African pop culture and highlight a burgeoning generation of young African\u2019s who look to their experiences and communities to produce music, art, social commentary \u2013 ideas that are complex and intelligent, cogent and thoughtfully expressed. It is through these multiple cultural mediums that we see opinion-pieces on everything from same-sex marriage to the impacts of international aid and food sovereignty. We also see music videos filmed on the streets of Accra, Lagos and Nairobi opening up our own visual imaginations. We see conversations emerging about the effects of globalization and political transformation on the continent. We see engagement within communities and across the Diaspora around issues of ethnic, class and gender divides, conversations between \u2018afro-rebels\u2019 and \u2018afropolitans.\u2019 We see feminist voices in online communities speaking out against sexual harassment and women\u2019s safety in public spaces from tahrir square to johannesburg. We see increasing attention being paid to fashion, adornment and body politics with young African feminists creating clothing lines committed to \u2018challenging notions of beauty and creating clothing that is both fabulous and political.\u2019 As noted by the brand mina danielle: \u201cour goal is to create a space and canvas for womyn from around the world, of various shapes, sizes, religious affiliations, races, ethnicities, sexual orientation, trans identified, inter-sex, age and (dis)ability.\u201d[3] We also see magazines like \u2018GoWoman Africa\u2019 and \u2018New African Woman\u2019 contributing to discussions on everything from Uganda\u2019s \u2018Anti-Pornography Bill\u2019 and the subsequent \u2018mini-skirt ban\u2019 to hairstyle choices and how these function as forms of cultural and political resistance.<\/p>\n
Through these multiple spaces and expressions we see how a new generation of young politicized Africans are using pop culture as an extension of their identity politics and their activism.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on popular culture and the internet as a site of knowledge production, blogger Minna Salami says: \u201cSocial Media is an additional tool to a conversation that we\u2019ve been having for a long time. It\u2019s social media that\u2019s new, and not the conversation. With social media we can more easily link dialogues across countries, continents and issues and create archives which in return have an influence on future narratives.\u201d Minna goes on to note \u201cAfrican feminists are at the forefront of using social media, activism, and creativity to change situations that affect women negatively.\u201d[4]<\/p>\n
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Minna Salami<\/p>\n
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We see African feminist bloggers like Sokari Ekine (blacklooks), Rainatou Sow (Make Women Count) and Spectra Speaks creating stories that work to repair (as Chimamanda Adichie calls it) the dignity of African peoples. Through her widely-read blog Spectra seeks to tell multiple stories including covering (as she says): \u201cLGBT Africa\u2019s resistance in a way that doesn\u2019t place sexual violence, political warfare, and death at the focal point, but reiterates over and over again that every day citizens are standing fast against oppression, speaking up for each other in the face of the west\u2019s infantilizing media.\u201d[5] Spectra also refers to the ways in which she uses music, art and other forms of popular culture to \u201craise awareness of critical issues and under-the-radar uprisings.\u201d[6] Similarly, in the section of her blog labeled \u2018CREA(C)TIVE SENSES\u2019 Sokari Ekine offers poetry, photography, short stories and more to bring together narratives of lived experience and human rights activism.<\/p>\n
And what could be more feminist than these ideas of self-determination, speaking back, resisting, challenging, individually and collectively, to define and fight for own liberation?[7]<\/p>\n
And what could be more feminist than celebrating the value, beauty and power of African women and girls?[8]<\/p>\n
And what could be more feminist than supporting the space for creativity, irreverence, imagination, dreaming and resistance that [popular culture] provides?[9]<\/p>\n
The truth is (whether or not we like to admit it), popular culture and the multiple spaces it encompasses continues to be one of the central means of engagement and participation in the world around us. Pop culture as a lens through which we view and shape the world provides opportunities for African feminists to provide nuances and to challenge existing stereotypes while making feminism more relatable and relevant. What popular culture offers is a means by which African feminists can amplify their voices and elucidate multiple ways of being and seeing in the world. Popular culture on the one hand helps us to make ignored voices more paramount, and on the other, provides a means by which feminists from across the continent can support each other from multiple locations by validating each other\u2019s voices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[This is a multi-part post. To read part 1 please click here] \u2018\u2019The Danger of A Single Story\u2019 \u201cMany stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n