This essay critically examines naming and knowing in relation to African women as subjects in a global 21st century. Proceeding from the premise that naming is an epistemological act, it critically examines the relation between naming and knowledge production about African women who move across boundaries as transnational subjects. It considers the constraints placed by such naming and knowledge production on African women’s subjectivity. Finally, it considers the ways that African women challenge and contradict the politics of naming, and the possibilities those contradictions offer for forging new epistemologies of gender and Africa in the 21st century.
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