Debating Concepts goals to replicate the values and editorial ethos of the African Arguments e-book sequence, publishing engaged, typically radical, scholarship, unique and activist writing from throughout the African continent and past. It affords debates and engagements, contexts and controversies, and critiques and responses flowing from the African Arguments books.
Introduction
Right here we study the position of the journal AWA: la revue de la femme noire (English: Awa: the black girl’s journal) (1964-73), launched by a community of girls’s rights activists, in shaping the emergence of a pan-Africanist political consciousness by means of transnational organising. As well as, the journal promoted ladies’s literacy {and professional} coaching to assist contribute to nation-building efforts particularly after independence. AWA was created by a bunch of girls together with the primary Senegalese skilled journalist Annette Mbaye d’Erneville. It was a platform connecting ladies in Africa, the diaspora and globally round gender and societal points, utilizing print media to specific themselves, articulate their pan-Africanist thought, and attain a wider viewers. This illustrates African ladies’s engagement in socio-political, cultural, and financial spheres and an consciousness of how their interconnectedness impacted their lives, prompting them to mobilise and organise in associations and actions to battle in opposition to gender inequality and to remodel patriarchal techniques from inside. Right this moment AWA constitutes a uncommon archive that paperwork a wealthy parenthesis of the emergence of ladies’s political consciousness and their organising. The journal’s editorial decisions illustrate this dedication within the interval between 1964 and 1976 in Senegal.
What was AWA?
Celebrating black womanhood and contributing to the emergence of a pan-African political consciousness in Africa and its diasporawas howAWA’s Editor in Chief Annette Mbaye d’Erneville described themain aim she advocated for by means of her journalism, writing and activism. On this, the journal follows the lead of many different magazines created on this vibrant interval together with Présence Africaine launched as a political, cultural and literary quarterly journal in 1947 earlier than changing into a publishing home.Certainly, within the quick aftermath of independence, the duty of nation-building went together with the necessity to promote feminine literacy and lift ladies’s political consciousness to ensure that them to contribute to the progress of the continent and its peoples. In opposition to this background, Mbaye d’Erneville and a community of different ladies’s rights activists conceptualised the journal “Femmes de Soleil” (English: Girls of the solar) in 1957. The month-to-month journal in French was subsequently renamed AWA: la revue de la femme noire. The identify AWA derives from the mom Eve, Awa in Wolof. Mbaye d’Erneville, a Senegalese journalist and poet born in 1926 in Sokone, wrote the introductions to every problem highlighting the mission of the journal:”Nous dirons à toutes nos sœurs d’Afrique et du monde, Voici notre fille! Qu’en ferons-nous? Awa deviendra ce que toutes nous déciderons qu’elle soit.” [We will say to our sisters from Africa and the world: this is our daughter! What will we do with it? AWA will become what we all want it to be.][1]
The journal launched in 1964 and was printed till 1973. The journal was printed due to the benevolence of the personal and unbiased printing press Abdoulaye Diop. It was funded by means of memberships, subscriptions and, commercial in addition to receiving a contribution from the then President of Senegal, Léopold Senghor. When it began in 1964, the journal used to publish points each month. In 1965 publication was diminished to 4, then in 1966 the editorial crew solely issued one version. After that there was a pause till 1973 with solely two editions printed resulting from monetary points.
AWA’s editorial decisions: literacy,transnational black femininity and pan-African politics in ladies organising
AWA’s editorial crew comprised a bunch of girls together with Annette Mbaye d’Erneville, Marie-Anne Sohai, Henriette Bathily, Virginie Camara and Marie-Thérèse Diop, amongst others, who had been additionally recognized for being both artists, ladies’s rights activists, or journalists. The editorial crew was dedicated to highlighting the experiences of black ladies.
AWA was not only a reflection on the lives and experiences of African ladies, it was additionally a platform for black girl world wide to community and embody solidarity and sorority. Their aim in creating AWAwas to focus on the completely different spheres of motion of girls’s actions in relation to the struggles they confronted resulting from gender inequalities.
The assertion under is from the editorial web page of the primary problem of AWA in 1964 underneath Annette Mbaye d’Erneville’s course:
“AWA se suggest seulement simplement d’être une raison de nous rencontrer, de nous retrouver pour mieux nous connaître et nous apprécier, nous femmes d’Afrique, femmes du monde entier.”
“AWA needs to easily be a purpose for us to satisfy, to resume ourselves to know one another higher, to understand each other, us African ladies, ladies from everywhere in the world.”[2] (Translation)
Using the pronoun “we” on this assertion underscores the journal’s invitation to all black ladies to get entangled within the development of the journal. The journal’s advocacy for feminine training, skilled coaching and promotion of literacy is preeminent. As Ruth Bush makes clear in her article “Mesdames, Il Faut Lire!” (English: Girls we should learn!), which borrows the title from an article by a contributor writing underneath the pseudonym “Sim” within the second problem printed in February 1964, AWA editors “performed a major position in defining in particular native settings the worth of literacy itself as a method for self-improvement and collective identification”.
As well as, their advocacy for the advance of black ladies’s lives is pragmatic, based mostly their on a regular basis experiences. Many articles, songs, poems and different points of black ladies’s life had been printed between 1964 and 1973 displaying the multidimensional skills and roles of girls in society. The journal’s imaginative and prescient was to achieve ladies and have a good time their achievements in addition to their contributions in societies which the patriarchal surroundings tended to miss. Plural definitions of femininity and black womanhood and pan-Africanist consciousness are two necessary editorial themes of curiosity. AWA advocated for black ladies’s company and amplified their voices in each facet of their communities’ socio-cultural, political, and financial realities. To do that, AWA celebrated the achievements of girls in management corresponding to members of parliament: Caroline Diop, Awa Dia Thiam, Lena Dianne Gueye and Marie-anne Sohai Sambou. Caroline Diop, from Mbour, for example, was the primary girl MP in Senegal, elected amongst 69 males. She was a part of the Girls’s department of UPS, the Democratic Bloc of Senegal (BDS). Equally, AWA additionally celebrated the achievements of different ladies corresponding to Suzanne Diop, the primary Senegalese feminine Justice of the Peace.
In doing this, AWA purposefully centred biographies of girls in public life and their position in nation-building. The dedication to be a part of nation-building struggles was essential on this post-colonial context as illustrated by these phrases from the primary Senegalese feminine member of parliament Caroline Faye Diop:
“Nous voulons participer au développement de notre nation, avoir une half entière aux responsabilités. Aux heures importantes de notre histoire, nous avons toujours été à vos côtés, souvent même devant vous.”
“We wish to contribute to the event of our nation, to have a full share in these duties. At necessary instances in our nation’s historical past, we’ve all the time been by your aspect, typically even taking the lead.” [3] (Translation)
Consequently, AWA mentioned amongst different themes: skilled and reproductive roles, the situation of feminine staff (as secretaries, MPs, or fighters in Guinea in Could 1964, in Moscow, September 1964 and Senegal, Could 1965).
Pan-African consciousness was key to AWA’s contents as a result of a few of its editorial committee members had been additionally ladies’s activists who took half in key continental initiatives of girls’s organising. Consequently, AWA documented and took half within the many essential steps of pan-Africanist movement-building and anti-colonial struggles. A defining second was their participation within the first African ladies’s convention: the Worldwide Convention of African Girls (CAF) on 31 July 1962 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (then Tanganyika) the place just a few ladies’s rights activists together with Aoua Keita, Jeanne Martin Cisse, Virginie Diallo Camara and Pumla Kisosonkole performed a key position. This convention was instrumental within the institution, the next 12 months, of the Organisation for African Unity (OAU). In actual fact, it might need constituted the “constructing block” for ladies’s political activism at a continental degree contributing to pan-African consciousness. After a congress held in Dakar Senegal in July 1974 together with 14 unbiased international locations, and 10 nationwide liberation actions, the African Convention of Girls was to turn out to be the Pan African Girls’s Group (PAWO) with an enduring nickname: “La panafricaine des femmes” (English: Girls’s pan-Africanism). On the similar assembly, it was determined that 31 July would symbolically turn out to be African Girls’s Day.
Transnational politics of black womanhood is one other important focus of AWA’s editorial line. That is for example the item of the journal’s sections “Echos” and “À travers le continent”(Information from the continent) because the journal’s predominant readership was Francophone Africa and Black worlds. In different phrases, the journal highlights an aesthetic and a imaginative and prescient of blackness that includes the lived experiences of black ladies. That is illustrated by the truth that the journal spotlighted stunning photos of black ladies symbolising a sure imaginative and prescient of femininity and Afro-modernity with photos of landscapes the place black ladies evolve. These had been assumed to be the primary issues that attracted readers, curated with the intention of difficult single narratives on African and black ladies. Certainly, such visible representations contribute to the deconstruction of destructive stereotypes and misconceptions about African and black ladies’s realities and articulate as an alternative another picture of their company. These pictures associate with stunning and dense texts that replicate the lives and experiences of African ladies. Among the headlines embody “Oumar et la calebasse'(Oumar and the calabash], “Petits Problèmes Scolaires” (Small points with faculties] and “Les Femmes et l’expérience de la journée proceed au Sénégal”(Girls and their experiences with all-day faculty in Senegal).
AWA: a platform for femininity or feminism?
AWA didn’t have the ambition to publish revolutionary or feminist content material, which on the time was removed from being singular in Africa or globally. Because the editorial of the primary version of the journal presenting the target of AWA makes clear, the journal doesn’t intention to “serve feminism”, however somewhat to be a platform to emphasize “our prospects, our femininity … It’s out of query to make use of AWA both to launch a campaign for the equality between women and men or declare the emancipation of the African girl. All that is already passé as in all places, ladies have proven their talents” (AWA, January 1964). Fairly, the journal’s focus was primarily to teach ladies to be good residents, housewives and moms. AWA did so by offering its readership with insights starting from literature to well being, traits in style and decor, to information on ladies’s organising and recipes, to highlights of key feminine figures.
At its inception, the journal’s focus was to create a platform for ladies in Francophone Africa to mobilise, and to organise. As an example, the editorial of its third problem (3 March 1964) was “let’s unite”. On this name for unity, they invite ladies to place collectively their experiences, mental contributions, group organising expertise and encourage all ladies to have a good time the completely different values that enrich their Pan-African and Black political consciousness. They cite the Worldwide Council of Girls and the Pan-African Girls convention as examples of girls coming collectively to construct stronger alliances and resist patriarchal societies. The crew of the journal additionally included males (although they had been restricted as the main focus was primarily to amplify ladies’s voices) which mirrored the desire to deliver collectively the voices of all in society on the understanding that gender inequality is a societal problem, not simply ladies’s accountability. By publishing and by organising and mobilising politically, AWA’s editors had been radical. The journal hosted the musings of an overtly feminist technology together with sociologist Fatou Sow and MP Caroline Faye Diop. As an example, in regards to the celebrations of Girls’s fortnight, Caroline Diop mentioned: “the baobab could also be sturdy and tall, it was mothered by a bit grain”. And about feminism, she mentioned: “I’m a feminist. I’m for equality between women and men, however I’m not speaking about mathematical equality. However one which subsumes itself within the complementarity between genders” (AWA, March 1964, p. 32).
This ideological positioning on the problem of girls’s liberation as one which required the “complementarity of sexes” can be fixed as was illustrated by editorial of the final problem printed in Could 1973 that includes the feminine fighters of the African Occasion for the Liberation of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) co-founded by Amilcar Cabral in Bissau Guinea (Cabral died in January 1973): “Cette complémentarité dans l’motion favorise justement l’émancipation de la femme du maquis… “(This complementarity in motion is essential to ladies’s emancipation). [4]
Unsurprisingly nonetheless, the male contributors typically used the journal to convey patriarchal messages corresponding to Joseph Mathiam’s contribution within the first problem defending polygamy and calling African ladies to be “much less irresponsible and extra mature” (p. 29, problem 1, 1964). Such recurrent positioning has been the item of criticism even throughout the journal. As an example, contemplate a response by Helene Pillote to an editorial by Goor Gu mak (a frequent contributor) in opposition to the paternalism (and sexism) of a few of AWA’s opinion writers. In her response, Helene Pillote referred to as out Goor Gu Mak’ssexist article that reduces ladies to the place of submission by wanting them to have keep at their place of servitude and a supply of inspiration. Pillote replied by stating that emancipation is feasible and has been the only battle for ladies who advocate for liberation in opposition to what the article (which Pillote seeks to answer) claims. It’s as much as males to problem that development if they’re scared that their privileges and luxury are being threatened by emancipated ladies.
One other problem for the journal was to hook up with grassroots ladies and transnational organisations regardless of Awa’s ambition to signify ladies from all walks of life and social courses and publish content material that will converse to all. As an example, underneath the journal part “la lettre du mois” (Month-to-month letter] of AWA problem 8 of October 1964, the letter titled “Awa : est-elle nationaliste ?” (Is Awa nationalist?) states: “Awa est un journal féminin qui s’adresse à toutes les femmes noires, de tous les milieux”. (Awa is a feminist journal devoted to all black ladies, from all courses). Regardless of these declarations, the journal’s editorial line typically contracted this imaginative and prescient and it struggled to essentially join with the grassroots due to its elitism: “AWA doit être la revue de l’élite féminine” (Awa should be the journal of elite ladies] (p.32, problem 1, 1964).
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Conclusion: AWA’s legacy
African ladies have been invested in articulating thought round black womanhood and contributing to the rise of a pan-African political consciousness within the aftermath of independence as mentioned right here. They did so by resisting patriarchy and bringing ahead their issues for a greater recognition of their rights. On this sense, AWA sought to focus on ladies’s on a regular basis experiences by means of selling a black aesthetics and responding to extra pragmatic contents by means of pictures, recipes and poetry and writings in addition to celebrating mental achievements, political and social. On this, AWA contributes to transnational African feminisms previously and at this time. AWA not solely conjures up the youthful technology of girls to deal with their realities but in addition to advocate for ladies’s rights in a altering context.
Right this moment, Awa’s viewers is a very-well educated class which could distinction with its preliminary motive to signify on a regular basis experiences. Certainly, that is one in all motivations behind the choice by Ruth Bush and Claire Ducournau to digitise AWA and make it accessible as a web-based archive. This digitisation was achieved by means of the World Challenges mission of the Arts and Humanities Analysis Council (UK) in partnership with IFAN-Cheikh Anta Diop, Musée de la Femme Henriette-Bathily and the Nationwide Archives of Senegal. In our 2020 interview, Ruth Bush additionally talked about the 2018 portrait made by artist Fahamu Pecou Jigeen bu bees fenkhna (Daybreak of Lady) representing what AWA might seem like if it existed at this time.
Finish Notes
[1] Web page 3, problem 1, January 1964.
[2] Editorial, web page 3, problem 1, January 1964.
[3] web page 16, problem 3, March 1964.
[4] web page 5, problem 4, Could 1973.
In regards to the sequence:
‘African Feminisms: A Fixed Awakening’ is Debating Concepts’ newest sequence – co-edited by Rosebell Kagumire – inspecting social and feminist actions on the continent, the shifts and implications internally and externally. What’s shaping the discourse round ladies’s and gender-diverse folks’s points and their rights? The sequence will examine a few of the most pertinent intersecting points corresponding to: understanding the division of concept, coverage and follow; new age influences and what grounds them? These themes might be located within the bigger continental debates of politics and human improvement in addition to classes from South-South collaboration in re-centring decolonization within the battle for equality and freedom.
Rama Salla Dieng is a scholar activist and presently a lecturer on the Centre of African Research, College of Edinburgh. Amongst different subjects, her work focuses on politics and social actions together with African feminisms. She is the editor of Féminismes Africains: Une histoire Décoloniale (Présence Africaine, Paris, 2021), and the co-editor of Feminist Parenting, Views from Africa and Past (Demeter Press, 2020).
Korka Sall is the Assistant Director of the Minnesota Research in Worldwide Growth MSID-Senegal. She got here again to Senegal after 9 years within the USA instructing and conducting analysis at UMass Amherst, Mount Holyoke Faculty, and Harvard College. Korka is likely one of the Coordinators of the African Girls’s Millennium Initiative on Poverty and Human Rights (AWOMI), which focuses on Girls and Gender Growth. She coordinated AWOMI’s panel on Gender-Primarily based Violence through the 2019 Worldwide Convention on Inhabitants and Growth organized by UNFPA in Nairobi, Kenya. Her analysis pursuits embody gender research, feminist research and African diaspora research.
