Challenging hierarchies in Anglophone Cameroon literature: women, power and visions of change in Bole Butake's plays
Date
2011-09-22
Authors
Nkealah, Naomi Epongse
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Abstract
Through an in-depth analysis of selected texts, this study engages with the ways in which the
Anglophone Cameroonian playwright, Bole Butake, interprets questions of gender, sex and
female power. The study traces the evolution of Butake’s vision of women from his first play
Betrothal without Libation (1982) to his latest play Family Saga (2005). The analysis focuses
on how women construct power in the imaginary worlds of Butake’s writing and how, in
turn, power is constructed through them. Questions of femininities and masculinities are
probed in an effort to determine the writer’s ideological leanings. Using a feminist
framework, particularly that postulated by acclaimed scholar Florence Stratton (1994), this
work engages with Butake’s nine published plays with the simple objective of deconstructing
the different layers of meanings embedded in the dramatic narratives’ construction of power
politics within urban and rural spaces.
This study aims to critique not only Butake’s use of imagery, allegory and other narrative
techniques in his creative imagining of women’s identities, but also the gender implications
of hierarchical formations within the worlds of Butake’s plays. Essentially, the thesis looks at
Butake’s constructions of female power and women’s agency and the implications these have
on feminist discourses.
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Keywords
Bole Butake, Women, Cameroon, Literature, Plays