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Abstract
This study is an attempt to document and critically examine what I shall term the "proverbial revolt" of Kasena women from northern Ghana, a phenomenon that constitutes and is constituted by a subversive and resistive use of a misogynistic oral tradition by traditional women. The women take advantage of a socially sanctioned medium, the joking relationship that pertains between a Kasena woman and her husband's siblings or kin of the same generation, to subvert and contradict Kasem proverbs and the conservative, sexualized local ideology of power therein. The focus is to examine the women's proverbs in order to uncover the complex creative process by which they demonstrate various levels of consciousness regarding gender equality and female identity.
Two main theoretical discourses frame this research: postcolonial theory and African feminism. I argue that the women's search for a place within an oral tradition in a local community seems to challenge "the triumphant creed of hybridity" that is being advanced by postcolonial theorists that tends to neglect the yearnings of people everywhere for a sense of place. Secondly, I examine the postcolonial discourse of emergent difference and argue that in spite of its appeal to studies of underrepresented groups, and its usefulness as a starting point for theorizing African gender identity, the representational strategies that African feminists have often adopted in order to bring the concerns of the subaltern into the wider discourse of feminism have left their target African societies largely misrepresented and under theorized. I examine some ways in which literary output such as the Kasena women's proverbial activity, when subjected to close analysis, can offer alternative ways for theorizing African gender identity.
