Ethics and Human Rights in Anglophone African Women's Literature: Feminist Empathy

In: Comparative Feminist Studies

Abstract

Ethics and Human Rights in Anglophone African Women's Literature -- Preface -- Note -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- 1 Introduction: The Ethical Turn in African Literature -- African Feminism: Old Wine in a New Wine Bottle? -- African Feminism: A Short Historical Sketch -- The Weaknesses of African Feminist Theory -- Female Subjectivity and African Feminist Discourse -- Empathy: Making Sense of a Concept -- Human Rights and Literature -- Narratives, Privilege, and the Pain of Other People -- African Women's Narratives and Feminist Empathy -- Notes -- 2 Feminism as Fairness -- We Should All Be Feminists -- John Rawls and the Original Position -- Why Does Society Hate My Body? -- Narrating Justice and Fairness -- Guilt and the Search for Justice -- Agent-Regret as Necessary for Fairness -- Imagining Human Rights -- Notes -- 3 Diary of Intense Pain: The Postcolonial Trap and Women's Rights -- The Limits of Postcolonial Criticism -- Pain and the Challenge of Being an African Woman in the Twenty-first Century -- Of Pain and the Demand for Empathy -- Pain, Solidarity, and Search for Community -- Mugabe Syndrome and the Challenges of Postcoloniality -- Notes -- 4 The Body in Pain and the Politics of Culture -- The Politics of Female Circumcision -- I Tell of the Body in Pain -- Bodily Pain as a Trope for Existential Pain -- Narrative, Empathy, and Community -- Notes -- 5 Abstractions as Disablers of Women's Rights -- Lola Shoneyin: Polygamy as a Disabling Institution -- Raising Questions, Raising Awareness -- Nationalism and Human Rights -- When Right Means Life -- Notes -- 6 The Enslaved Body as a Symbol of Universal Human Rights Abuse -- Slavery as a Metaphor of Abuse of Human Rights -- Dreams as an Expression of Human Rights -- Women in Search of Lost Dignity -- Historical Consciousness and Human Rights