"About Lovers in Accra": Urban Intimacy in Ama Ata Aidoo's "Changes: A Love Story"

• Published in: Research in African literatures 2002-06, Vol.33 (2), p.61-80
• Main Author: Olaussen, Maria
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adultery; African literature; African writers; Aidoo, Ama Ata; Aidoo, Ama Ata (1942- ); Authors, African; Black literature; Cities; Civil rights; Contemporary literature; Crimes against; Criticism and interpretation; Cultural differences; Essays; Females; Feminism; Fiction; Gender relations; Ghana; Globalization; Husbands; Literature; Love; Marriage; Men; Mothers; Novels; Parents & parenting; Polygyny; Protagonists; Sexuality; Social aspects; Social change; Spouses; Urban areas; Urban life; Wives; Women; Women's rights; Womens rights movements
• ISSN: 0034-5210; 1527-2044; 1527-2044
• DOI: 10.1353/ral.2002.0055

All struggles and all definitions and attempts at analyzing oppression need to be placed within their particular historical and social situation. This also applies to the contradictory idea, originating in nineteenth-century Europe, of the "West" as a unified entity somehow naturally more suited to feminist concerns while at the same time constituting a threat to "true womanhood" and "traditional values" in other parts of the world -- "traditional values" that on closer analysis turn out to be "some kind of hashed-up Victorian notions" (Our Sister Killjoy 117). As Anannya Bhattacharjee (1997) shows, this idea is part of a neocolonial definition of the world as comprising of separate and essentially different cultures where certain "cultural practises" are supported and encouraged and others are not. She takes as an example the way in which US immigration authorities and development agencies tend to see the oppressive treatment of women as an inherent and valuable part of these "traditions," whereas elements that challenge workplace policies or the global economic order are less acceptable. What we have then in Bâ's novel is not a critique of polygyny or any other particular form of marriage but rather of the actions of husbands who are free to manipulate different institutions to fit their own needs. As Obioma Nnaemeka points out in her discussion of the novel, "What is at issue in Bâ's novels, particularly Une si longue lettre, is the transformation of traditional African institutions by `modernity' and the manipulation of these transformatory stages by men to their own advantage thereby creating the pain of their female partners" (170). Nnaemeka stresses the difference between the institution of polygyny in Islamic and African culture and the way it is "practiced in African urban areas particularly by affluent, middle and upper-middle classes" (170). According to Nnaemeka, this new form of polygyny that she terms "monogamized polygamy" (175) has intensified the masculinization of the African tradition, thereby deepening the marginalization of women and creating instances (for the women in particular) where tradition is progressive and modernity reactionary" (171). These are important points to be raised especially in relation to Mariama B?'s text, where the issue of women's vulnerability in heterosexual romantic relationships is often seen as a specifically African or Islamic problem.(6) What Nnaemeka leaves untouched, however, is the text's insistence o