THEORISING WOMEN EXISTENCE: REFLECTIONS ON THE RELEVANCE OF THE AFRICANA WOMANIST THEORY IN THE WRITING AND ANALYSIS OF LITERATURE BY AND ABOUT ZIMBABWEAN WOMEN

Abstract

One of the major challenges in the writing and analysis of African women’s literature has been lack of an acceptable theoretical focus. So much of the writing and analysis of this literature has been influenced by the Feminist paradigm, and which largely operates within the walls of Western thinking. The need for an African – Centered paradigm and theoretical framework prompted Hudson Clenora Weems to come up with an African – centered Africana Womanist Theory to inform the writing and understanding of African – American and African women literature. The theory responds to the inadequacies of both Feminism and Black Feminism and the subsequent need for proper naming and defining of the woman of African descent. This paper, then, intends to examine two issues – the relevance of the Africana Womanist Theory – to the writing and analysis of Zimbabwean women’s literature. The relevance of the theory can be located in its demonstration of women categorization not as a monolithic bloc, and is also quite strong in its Afrocentric approach to the writing and analysis of Zimbabwean women’s literature. This paper demonstrates that Zimbabwean women writers seek to rewrite official historiography and contest the exclusion and misrepresentation of women experience, but they largely do so within the context of the feminist theoretical focus. Subsequently Zimbabwean women’s literature is also read and understood in the context of feminism and not just Africana Womanism.