The Eurocentric Gender-phobic Neurosis: Potential Theoretical Threats to African Male-Female Relations
摘要
Most of European male-female relations are premised on an anxiety disorder, realised in this chapter as gender-phobic neurosis. It is characterised not only by extreme and irrational fear but also an exaggerated, usually inexplicable and illogical fright of uncomplicated gender and sexuality matrices. The prominent infiltration and imposition of Eurocentric models and theories have created perplexities in Africa’s conception of male-female relations. Contemporary male-female relations have been distorted by inapplicable European models of gender and sexualities such as radical feminism, liberal feminism, postmodern feminism and queer identities. This chapter advances the contention that theories can be phobic-neurosis (and/or phobic-disorder) sites that when not used with careful consideration, can be culturally annihilative. Informed by this background, the chapter interrogates the extremism and irrationality as an emblematic form of gender-phobic neurosis, chartered by European gender and sexuality theories, a potential scourge to African conceptualisation of male-female relations. Thus, the chapter is theoretically sensitive to Africana Womanism, a perspective that gives precedence to cherished experiences of Africans on male-female relations. It critiques extremism and irrationality as a symbolic form of gender-phobic neurosis chartered by European gender and sexuality theoretical pedestals in the contemporary period. The chapter examines the pitfalls of radical feminism, liberal feminism, postmodern feminism and queer theory. Although these are not the only European gender and sexuality theories, they, however, represent discursive constructs inadequate to capture the essence of African male-female relations. In engaging these theories, the chapter is theoretically furnished with Africana Womanism, an Afrocentric critical canon that is more attuned to the valued experiences of African male-female relations.