SEXUALITY AND THE BALANCE OF POWER IN CHIKA UNIGWE’S ON BLACK SISTERS’ STREET AND TONY ALUM’S IMAGES FROM A BROKEN MIRROR

ABSTRACT

This research investigates the concepts of sexuality and the balance of power as metanarratives in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street and Tony Alum’s Images from a Broken Mirror. These texts belong to the growing literary oeuvre of the African Diaspora literary tradition, and owe  interpretative  allegiance  to  the  ethno-cultural  heritage  of  social  texts,  texts  that  are expressive of deep notions and axiomatic functionalities o f socio-historical experiences: conventions and permutations. They chronicle chilling accounts of race, displacement, sexuality, culture and hormonal (power) trade narrated from the perspective of difference, and through the eyes of young Black females thrown together by fate in a battle for survival and individuality. Structured  into  five  chapters,  this  research  provides  theoretical  and  critical  basis  for  the narratives in the texts, narratives that reveal cultural and social symbols referencing sexuality and the balance of power. This work is written bearing  in mind the discussions  and theoretical arguments existing from research inquests into the position of women in the theorizing and contextualization   of   postcolonialism.   To   this   end,   the   socio-theoretical   orientation   of Postcolonial Feminism is chosen as an investigative framework for this research. This orientation is driven  by a recognition of the  need  to  represent  the  subaltern,  those suppressed  female identities who are both victims of racial and gender preconceptions, and are caught in a mesh of expectations and frustrations in a bursting bid to survive the doldrums of economic privation.

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

Feminist studies of literary texts have given rise to critical considerations of sensitive areas of human  life  that  were  previously  ignored  by  critics.  One  of  such  areas  is  the  nature  and complexity of human sexuality as a distinctive gendered construct. Sexuality as a cultural formative has weaved its way into the critical and thematic explorations of texts that speak about gender, race, culture and identity. For most feminist critics, sexuality is not just a biological composition, it is also a potent psycho-socio instrument that could be used to regulate and define the lives of women, for in the words of Harold Schneider, “the constituents of community, culture and ethnicity, and their interlinking to gender, sexuality and rights are very relevant and crucial to feminist discourses on female sexuality and rights in the African continent, especially the Sub-Saharan region” (40). This assertion is crucial to feminist discourse.

What this means is that for feminist discourse, sexuality is treated as a subset of the female gender, a characteristic she lives with in relationship to the cultural conventions, and possibly patriarchal  norms  of her  social  milieu.  Sexuality also  forms  part  of the  discourse narrative and theorizing of postcolonialism. Sexuality is seen by postcolonial theorists as not just a gendered product, but as a cultural symbol for the exertion of power. They look beyond the hedonistic notions of sexuality to consider its symbolist interpretations and revelations on the dynamics of race, culture and power for the sexes involved. “With the bitter experience of colonialism and masculinity for the female folks came new definitions for sexuality and gender” (Ann Laura Stoler, 17)

To be male was to be the “brutish, oppressive and authoritarian” figure who took out his masculinity on the female at the slightest provocation, while to be female was to be the “passive,

docile and subservient” figure who kowtowed to the whims and caprices of her irreverent and irrepressible male. This created a power imbalance between the two sexes that prospered under the existing and prevailing patriarchal environment. Postcolonialism deepened this divide, for as Leith-Ross  observed,  “after  colonization  and  independence,  African  societies  continued  to subject the colonial gender-sex identities to further pressures and constructions across the continent”  (15).  For  Nkolika  Ijeoma  Aniekwu,  “the  postcolonial  state  remained  largely patriarchal and unreconstructed, and in addition to reproducing the logic of colonial oppression, it formulated converging constructions of sexual identities” (35).

Sexuality is generally seen as the feelings and activities connected with a person’s sexual desires, but by the form, order and impact of post-colonialism and modernism, it has added a new dimension in which it could be seen as a social construct on which racial and cultural identities can be formed and interpreted. With this interpretation of sexuality going beyond “the way in which we experience and express ourselves as sexual beings” (Rathus et al, 5) to the notions of identity and power, sexuality has become one of the discursive tools for interpreting the theme of race and cultural hegemony, especially in postcolonial texts. These texts, Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street and Tony Alum’s Images from a Broken Mirror are analogous in their representations of race and culture and the convolutions that go with them. They are not just texts having sexuality as a metanarrative, but are also revelations on the power struggle that play out in the expressions and transactions of sexuality.

As a towering narrative in Diaspora writings and postcolonial literatures, sexuality and the  balance  of power  share  in  the  broad  representations  of the transcultural and  obviously displaced individual trapped in the helplessness and pressure of his/her new settlement. For the Diaspora writer, the thematization of sexuality is a window to the larger experience of racism

and survival in a foreign land where you are pressured to use what you have to get what you deserve, or pay what you owe. Our texts exemplify this dilemma. Sex is presented as a means to control and subjugate the other, the colonized. Anne McClintock points out that Edward Said in his work, Orientalism had argued that “the superiorly strong position that the western male enjoyed was produced through the sexual subjection of the ‘Oriental’ woman which enabled the discourse about the ‘Orient'” (77). According to Said, “this Orientalism took the perverse form of

‘white male fantasy’ that sexualized an Orient woman for the pleasure and possession of the Western power” (67). These are the  issues confronting  the Diaspora female trapped  in the waywardness and recklessness of living at home, and the excesses and hate of her host’s (new) land. The struggle to survive racial oppression, economic starvation and its uncertainties, and the gnawing pressure to submit one’s body to be used is a critical existential discourse we encounter in our primary texts. The female characters are pressured to use what they have to get what they need (economic assets to service their debts and be free), but at what price? In On Black Sisters’ Street, we see that:

The  women  are  not  sure  what  they  are  to  one  another.  Thrown  together  by  a conspiracy of fate and a loud man called Dele, they are bound in a sort of unobtrusive friendship,  comfortable with whatever  little they know of one another,  asking  no questions unless they are prompted to, sharing deep laughter and music in their sitting room, making light of the life that has taught them to make the most of the trump card that God has wedged in between their legs, dissecting the men who come to them (men who spend nights lying on top of them or under them, shoving and fiddling and clenching their brown buttocks and finally [mostly] using their fingers to shove their own pale meat in) in voices loud and deprecating … (17).

With this, we see the extent to which one’s despair and helplessness could go searching for survival and providence. This aspect of sexuality that  is “forced” (Michel Foucault, 163) is interpreted by some postcolonial feminist critics such as Audrey Lordes as reflective of the helplessness  and  dependence  of  the  economically  stranded  and  psychologically  fragmented female sex worker in the hands of her male patronage, whose body ritual she must endure in order  to  access  the  money  he  offers.  This  kind  of  narrative  that  speaks  to  the  soul  and experiences of the sexually colonized female is a distinguishing factor for Western and postcolonial feminist narratives on sexuality. To Aniekwu, “while Western feminists emphasize individual female autonomy and sexual rights, African counterparts are struggling with culturally

‘accepted’ forms of female subordination, gender inequity and inequality” (5).

This difference in views led to the rejection of mainstream feminism by feminists from other regions, especially postcolonial cultures of Africa, Asia, Latin America, amongst others. This marked the beginning of postcolonial feminism, “to cater for the specifics and singular thoughts of the postcolonial woman” (Lordes, 67). For Coomaraswamy, “African (and much of Third-World’ feminism) owes its origins to different dynamics than those that generated Western feminism” (15). This research proposes as a thesis the expression of sexuality as sensual experiences and transactions that convey deep cultural psychologies and racial sentiments. To the African/postcolonial feminist critic, sexuality is a cultural symbol construing identity, and revealing the politics of control and oppression. In a colonized and oppressive environment, sex can take up functions as a means for exploitation and violence. Here as in most cases, the victim is the female and the perpetrator is the male.

Certain critics such as Foucault have used this victim/perpetrator’ dialectic in describing the frictional relationship between the colonized and the colonizer. However, sex can also be

liberating and fulfilling, a means to independence and prosperity. Here, sex is transactional, a means of trade and economic value. Most displaced and disillusioned females in the Diaspora caught in the dark world of sex merchandising are sworn to fierce madams and agents who demand returns from them of every sex transaction they broker. This is the situation in our primary texts,  where young  females are shipped  as sex slaves to  Belgium and  Italy.  Their courageous efforts to livelihood and self-sufficiency from this risqué business are the energy that drives their stories.

1.2 Research Problem

The notion of sexuality and the balance of power remains a constant critical framework for the flourishing of ideas on the politics of racial identities and gendered dichotomies. This research is an investigation into this notion, and what it means for the female characters in Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street and Alum’s Images from a Broken Mirror. Sexuality is explored in these texts not as a biological concept, but as a discourse formative opening up narratives revealing economic survival, gender control, and surprisingly psychological growth.

The central narrative in these texts is sexuality and the balance of power. However, here lies the problem, to what extent is this narrative a coordinating formative driving the entire gamut of the texts, and what is the perception of the female body in the texts as reported by the experiences of the female characters with the male figures? This perceptivity is crucial to the interpretation of the sexual narratives in the texts. It is the position of this research that the exalted status of sexuality in the texts is a symbolic remembering of the politics of colonialism, and the narratives it generated. This is investigated.

In these texts, the authors intelligently employ sex as a metaphoric canvass for painting graphically  the  horrifying  brutalities  of  colonialism,  and  exploring  the  disillusionment  and

frustrations that comes with independence and failed expectations. This metaphoric treatment of sex, though with adequate sensual representations creates a problem of interpretation and generalization, a dialectic that ponders on the humanity of the Diaspora environment that is oxymoronic in its offerings to foreigners, especially young desperate females, with a flesh worth paying for. This research interrogates this problem, providing clues on the typologies of sexual narratives contained in the texts.

Furthermore, researches into these narratives have not been thoroughly comprehensive in their analysis. As the literatures reviewed shows, sex is treated as a thematic element in the texts by most researchers. The lacuna therefore exists on the treatment of sex as a basic thematic element, and as a symbolic narrative revealing somber meditations on the conditions and perceptions of the black female in a postcolonial environment that employs sex as a weapon for colonizing and merchandizing her flesh. This gap is bridged in this research, as it provides theoretical and critical explanations on these ethno-social experiences. I would dare say that this work scores a first in the comprehensive treatment of Sexuality and the Balance of Power in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street and Tony Alum’s Images from a Broken Mirror.

1.3 Research Objectives

This research has as a critical objective, the exploration of sexuality and the balance of power in the texts under study. The following research objectives are intended:

1.   The study and interpretation of sexuality as a symbolic narrative in the texts

2.   The x-raying of the different levels of power and its balance in the texts

3.   The analysis of the ethno-historical connotations contained in the texts, as they reveal repressed and suppressed identities

4.   The  exposition  of  the  linkages  between  the  postcolonial  and  feministic  frameworks contained in the texts

5.   The comparison of the narrative and structural formatives that constitute difference as regarding sexuality and the balance of power in the texts.

1.4 Significance/Importance of the Research

This research is based on the sociological interpretation of literary texts that/posits that “every text is a reflection of certain cultural values and social norms that form the contextual elements contained in the work” (Chinyere Nwahunnaya, 34). This is expanded by Jefferson and Robey in their analysis where they observed that “a literary text must be regarded as the expression of the psychology of an individual, which in turn is the expression of the milieu and the period in which he lived and of the race to which he belong” (103). Based on this assertion on the sociological import of literary texts, this research is significant in four critical ways:

1.   It contributes to the growing mass of critical studies on Diaspora writings within the contemporary African literary tradition.

2.   It provides an enduring guide and referencing for further research on sexuality and the balance of power in related texts.

3.   It offers an insight into the nature and conditions of living for the culturally displaced and economically challenged African female in the Diaspora.

4.   It contributes to critical knowledge on the writings of Chika Unigwe and Tony Alum.

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