The UK title of Minna Salami’s most recent book, Can Feminism be African? A transformative vision of feminism invites inquisitiveness and studies the global impact and scale of feminism. When her book moved across the pond, and its US title changed to Feminist Freedom: An African Vision, the question of the title became a statement.
Minna Salami, a feminist, author, and speaker, loves the American title of her book. “I gave myself feminist freedom while writing this book, so I love the new title. I was in a kind of trance when I was writing it, and I allowed the book to channel itself through me.” Even with a different title, her words and political sentiment about African feminism remain the same, which is to “engage with African feminism as a political philosophy, and then to imagine what global discourses may look like with African feminist political philosophy at the center.”
Minna Salami was in London when we chatted via Zoom about Feminist Freedom. We spoke about imagining a new, equitable future through an African feminist lens, that Africa is the future, and the responsibility of African feminists, which, according to Minna, is “to resist and, at the same time, imagine a new world where our ideas are at the center.”
The Rumpus: In the introduction of your book, Feminist Freedom, an African Vision, you said, “African feminism gives more than language or vision. It recalibrates our values, opens our hearts, and expands our sense and our dreams.”
Minna Salami: This is the book I wish I had when I was starting my journey as an African feminist. There are many important books by African feminists. Still, this book engages with African feminism specifically as a political philosophy, and then imagines what global discourses may look like with African feminist political philosophy at the center. The book explores Africa and feminism not as opposing frameworks but as mutually enriching worldviews. I wanted to investigate how African epistemologies, particularly those grounded in ancestral knowledge, embodied wisdom, and the metaphysics of freedom, can reorient feminism towards more liberatory, imaginative horizons. The book shows African feminism as an imaginative and robust space of thought, of criticism, narrative, and political philosophy.
Rumpus: Why wasn’t a book like Feminist Freedom around when you were coming of age, and how is your book filling that gap?
Salami: There are too few books on African feminism, and that, of course, is because we live in a world that is both patriarchal and Eurocentric, what I call Europatriarchal in my previous book, Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone (Amistad, 2021). There has been a dearth of opportunities for us to publish, to speak, to engage widely with our ideas. Furthermore, African feminists, especially those who live on the continent, take real risks when they write about feminism, due to the backlash and opposition to feminism. Also, many African feminist books are academic books, because academia is a refuge for political thinking in much of the continent. Although my book is also scholarly, and so in that sense, it’s not a light read, but as it’s creative nonfiction, it is more accessible. The book aims to make space for a more metaphysical feminism that allows for imagination, ancestral knowledge, emotion, beauty, and contradiction to be central elements of theory and praxis. So it aims to dismantle the binary between academia and trade, reason and intuition, between activism and art, between politics and the soul. So I wrote a book for readers of feminism, African thought, philosophy, postcolonial theory, cultural criticism, and global justice, as well as for those yearning for depth, imagination, and disruption in their intellectual journeys. That’s the kind of book I always wanted to read when I was coming of age.
Rumpus: What are the risks for African feminists who live on the continent and speak out against patriarchy?
Salami: Silencing is a key strategy of patriarchal structures, and they get into trouble for speaking out about patriarchy. Women are encouraged to accept inequality for the sake of social harmony, and when they don’t, they are often ostracised and judged. Family ties can be cut when a woman speaks disapprovingly of the patriarchal entitlements. It is human to seek belonging and acceptance, and so many women choose silence in the face of injustice. These are some of the “milder” consequences; women who speak out also risk being criminalised, and in worst instances, losing their lives.
Rumpus: Does this lead to a kind of censorship or self-censorship for feminist authors on the continent?
Salami: Despite this, I sense that feminists on the continent do not self-censor. The most frightening leap is to call yourself a feminist, but once we do, we tend to become outspoken. We are inspired by each other’s bravery and expression, and that matters. African feminists are, in my experience, some of the most outspoken on the dangers and limitations of male rule. I have travelled around the globe speaking with other communities, and I am consistently moved by the boldness of our movement back home.
Rumpus: Any words of encouragement to them for speaking out?
Salami: To those who are not yet comfortable labeling themselves feminist, but who disapprove of gendered injustice, I would encourage them to read books by feminists, especially African feminists, but also from all parts of the world. In reading such literature, you might still hesitate, but you will at the very least find that you are not alone in your thoughts and experiences. Nothing is as rewarding for a woman as immersing herself in the canon of feminist literature; it is a profound reservoir of knowledge for women.
Rumpus: In your book, you highlighted that Western feminist movements have neglected African feminists’ contributions, thus reducing their global impact and their intelligence.
Salami: I find it perplexing that there’s so little interest in African feminist contributions to the movement by Western feminists at large. As a feminist and a writer, I am intrigued by feminist writing from all around the globe because to understand the movement-at-large, it’s necessary to be aware of the many intersecting connections. It’s a pity that the movement-at-large, dominated by Western feminists, has been uninterested in what African feminists have to say. The contribution of African feminism is especially important because we have been grappling with questions of war, militarization, decolonization, climate change, and neo-imperialism for a long time; topics that are now more urgent than ever to apprehend and connect the dots with “classic” patriarchy. We have so much to contribute to the canon of ideas, but racial and ethnic privileges have detrimentally diminished the impact feminism should have on a global scale.
Rumpus: According to your book, this type of marginalization also relegates African feminism to issues of humanitarianism—famine, ethnic cleansing, malnutrition—which are all very important to address and resist, but as you said, the main focus of African feminism cannot only be relegated to how it deals with these crises.
Salami: This has irritated me throughout my professional life as an African feminist. I mention African feminism, and someone tells me about humanitarian issues, like say about an organization that has built a well in some village. When a woman from the West says that she’s a feminist, people don’t start talking about some random village in Switzerland that they’ve given charity to. Her feminism is taken as a serious political movement with ideas about how to structure society, whether people agree or disagree with it. It’s not that humanitarian issues aren’t tremendously important, but these types of statements are a way of reducing African feminism to purely structural and developmental projects. African feminism should be recognised as a robust political philosophy that dissects the apparatuses of power and speaks to the spirit of dissent for everyone, everywhere, not just focusing on humanitarian issues or proving its African roots. I have positioned this book within political philosophy as a way of critiquing reductionism.
Rumpus: What books is Feminist Future in conversation with?
Salami: The book is inspired by so many brilliant writers. Patricia McFadden, who is a radical scholar and ecofeminist, whose book, Contemporarity: Sufficiency in a radical African feminist life, was a huge inspiration for writing this book. I was also inspired by the South African psychologist Kopano Ratele and specifically his book, The World Looks Like This from Here: Thoughts on African Psychology. And lastly, Michele Wallace’s Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman inspired my concept of “Andro-Africanism.” I think of Feminist Freedom as a companion to books like Desiree Lewis’s and Gabeba Baderoon’s Surfacing: On Being Black and Feminist in South Africa and Sylvia Tamale’s Decolonization and African Feminisms.
Rumpus: What does it mean to be a contemporary African feminist?
Salami: It means the same thing that it has always meant to be a feminist, to oppose male dominance. When you add the words contemporary and African, it means to oppose male dominance, of course, in relation to Africa, whether that is specifically in the continent or in the diaspora. Contemporary African feminists are looking at the ways in which male dominance is reproduced, using new technologies and new narratives. So it’s very much about bringing the opposition and the resistance into the present moment and into a specific kind of location, both diasporic and biophysical location.
Rumpus: African feminists are also a major part of shifting and shaping African culture. In your book, you said, “If women shaped Africanness on the institutionalised level that men do, healing, imagination, insouciance, and shakara… would be directly or indirectly implicated.”
Salami: Being a contemporary African feminist is beautiful because we have an opportunity to unleash Africa from the shackles of patriarchal and Eurocentric oppression. The book grapples very much with patriarchy, but also very much with Eurocentricity and the West’s domination, because these are some of the powers that oppress African women’s lives. Furthermore, African feminists have a responsibility to resist and, at the same time, imagine a new world where our ideas are at the center. In my book, I write about a “metaphysical Africa” where we conjure what Africa can become through an African feminist lens. I want to be clear, it’s not the Africa in the movies, like Black Panther, but it’s that spirit of what Africa can look like if we do away with these oppressive and regressive ways of thinking and structuring our societies.
Rumpus: In the book, you coined the term Andro-Africanism, which is a term to “describe this conflation of masculine identity with African identity. It implants androcentric ideals into the very notion of Africaness.” Can you elaborate more on this terminology and how it works against African feminism?
Salami: It’s equating Africanness with maleness, and it doesn’t leave any room for the female story. It assumes that men know everything, including what’s best for women. Andro-Africanism is so ingrained in African culture that you almost don’t notice it. It’s very sad and really concerning how many young African men on the continent today are perpetuating this idea of African identity. It’s an uncomfortable word for African men, which is what I want it to be, to be able to pinpoint how sexist the continent is.
Rumpus: Many might reject this term, and reduce these ideas to yet another Western invasion into African thought and intellectualism.
Salami: I mean, if you want to critique African feminism, do that, you have every right. We can all have different opinions on these things, but the laziest thing you can say, which also then is actually racist because it diminishes your own people, is to say, “Oh, that’s Western.” As if only Western people can come up with ideas that push against the grain. I grew up in Nigeria, but moved to Sweden as a teenager, and people always assume that I became a feminist in Sweden. It is not true at all. I grew up in Nigeria, and my feminism comes from there. That’s why I’m grappling with African issues. If it were that my feminism came from Sweden, then I would be writing about Swedish feminism. It’s such a weird idea that the continent does not have women who want to resist patriarchy.
Rumpus: This is anecdotal, of course, but I don’t think a woman can grow up on the continent and not be a feminist. I have lived in South Africa and traveled throughout Africa, and I have witnessed African women shaping everything—economics, the culture, politics, education, and the arts inside their homes and in the public sphere. Feminism is threaded throughout African culture.
Salami: Yes, I also don’t know how you could be from the continent and not be a feminist. But most African women in my circle don’t call themselves feminists. We are still a minority, but I cannot separate the two. I truly don’t know how I would be a woman and not be a feminist. It seems to me as counterintuitive as being Black and not opposing abolition. We need feminist freedom so everyone can imagine freely. We still have that Eurocentric colonial voice in our heads, saying “that we’re not good enough.” We still have the male voice that dictates that we aren’t autonomous. This limits our thinking and our ability to imagine. Feminist freedom gives us the foundation to imagine.
Rumpus: It feels like you’re saying that feminist freedom is the intersection we need for true liberation.
Salami: Yeah, definitely. Power suppresses our autonomy, our imagination, and our freedom, and true liberation is living according to the beat of our own drum. Feminist freedom is a fertile if sometimes frightening, in-between space that demands nuance, introspection, and intellectual courage.
Rumpus: A key philosophical theme in your book is the dated narrative that African societies have had matriarchies in the past. You said, “So what? They do not exist any longer.” Can you talk more about your push back against this narrative?
Salami: This has been the legacy trap of contemporary African feminism—since we’ve been matriarchal in the past, we’re going to somehow automatically be matriarchal again. If matriarchy is the rule of women, not just women having some advantages, we have not had any major societies that were matriarchal in recorded history. We have to question why people are saying that. And most of the people who are saying that also say that feminism is a Western import. So you add two and two together, and this seems like a key argument to dissuade women from being feminists. Fine, if we have matriarchies, what are we doing to reinstate some of that power? Matriarchies are not just going to automatically reinstate themselves. It seems as if they want us to glorify this past that actually never really existed.
Rumpus: Your book is helping us imagine a new, equitable future through an African feminist lens. How can we move from theory to action and establish these ideas and values within our culture?
Salami: The point of books like mine and the wider canon is to help people take action. Action comes after one has had the idea powerfully illuminate a situation that is no longer sustainable. My book speaks to the deep psyche and imagination of women, where I think a lot of change needs to happen as well. It’s a book of political philosophy and critical imagination, and it talks about other ways to perceive the world.
Rumpus: Lastly, according to a New York Times article, “Africa has the fastest-growing, youngest population of any continent, and by 2050, one in four people on the planet will be African.” Hence, Africa is poised to shape our economic, cultural, and political imagination. How does a feminist freedom fit within this context?
Salami: You have this very dynamic young population who haven’t lived under colonial rule at all, who are the first generation to have grown up questioning power structures, especially the structures vis-à-vis the West, and who are having deep and liberating conversations about gender dynamics. This is one reason that we have to heed the African continent, because the cultural impact is massive. Africa has a wealth of insight and experience for the rest of the world.
Click here to subscribe today and leave your comment, or log in if you’re already a paid subscriber.