Obioma Nnaemeka

thumb Obioma Grace Nnaemeka (born 1948) is a Nigerian-American academic and intellectual with her academic specialization being Women and Gender Studies, Africa and Africa Diaspora Studies and French Literature. She is known for being the creator of and theorizing on the term “Nego-Feminism”. Nnaemeka serves at the Indiana University, Indianapolis in the capacity of Chancellor’s Professor. She is the first Black female faculty at the university, and in addition, she is the first continental African to hold the title of Chancellor’s Professor at the same university. Nego-feminism is the feminism of negotiation; second, nego-feminism stands for “no ego” feminism. Nnaemeka was introducing the term “nego-feminism” and explaining its two meanings: feminism based on negotiation and a feminism that rejects ego. In the foundation of shared values in many African cultures are the principles of negotiation, give and take, compromise, and balance. Nnaemeka was explaining the cultural foundation of nego-feminism. She identified negotiation, reciprocity, compromise and balance as principles that can inform African feminist practice. African feminism is not reactive; it is proactive. She presented African feminism as capable of strategically negotiating and navigating difficult social structures. It knows when, where, and how to detonate patriarchal land mines. Nnaemeka was using the metaphor of “patriarchal land mines” to describe the obstacles African women encounter within gendered social structures. I propose nego-feminism not to occlude the diversity but to argue, as I do in the discussion of “building on the indigenous” in the last section of this article, that a recurrent feature in many African cultures can be used to name the practice. Nnaemeka was careful to distinguish her theory from an attempt to present African women or African feminism as homogeneous. Aware of a practice (feminism in Africa) that is as diverse as the continent itself Nnaemeka was acknowledging the diversity of feminist practices across Africa. Her proposal of nego-feminism was therefore not intended to erase differences among African women or impose a single model on the continent. External links Category:1948 births Category:Living people Category:Women academics from the United States Category:21st-century American women Category:Indiana University faculty