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Feminism or Total Revolution? Ideological Reading of Iyorwuese Hagher’s
Mulkin Mata
Ameh Dennis Akoh, PhD
Associate Professor and Head of Department of Languages and Linguistics,
Osun State University, Ikire Campus, Osun State, Nigeria. E-mail:
amehakoh@yahoo.co.uk,
ojodumi39@gmail.com; Tel:
+2348035992490, +2348050293410.
Downloaded 18 February, 2012
Accepted 29 March, 2012 |
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Feminism in African drama has become
synonymous with revolution. This is because feminists do not only
believe that the struggle for equality involves just ‘speaking back’
but a total and concerted, and sometimes violent, upstaging of
patriarchal authority. The paper discusses Mulkin Mata, a play
written by Iyorwuese Hagher and holds that the playwright uses sex
as an instrument of socio-political and economic liberation for his
society. It stresses that the strength of the play lies in its
commitment to the subject of revolution, while defining its
necessities or impossibility, its heterogeneous socio-historical
contexts, its prospects and possible directions. At the end, the
paper concludes that the playwright uses the Women Revolutionary
Government in the play (with it's ideology of total revolution) as a
metaphor for military rule, which he castigates vehemently.
Therefore, the play goes beyond the mere search for feminism,
ideologically speaking, and addresses the question of good and bad
governance in Nigeria and Africa.
Keywords: Feminism, revolution, drama, governance, Africa.
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