Bodies of knowledge: Madness and power in Africana women's texts

This dissertation focuses on the representation of madness in the writings of women of Africa and the African Diaspora, more specifically the United States, the Caribbean Islands, and sub-Saharan Africa. It seeks to engage madness as a social text in African women's texts and cultures. While many critics have devoted attention to a Western construction of madness and madness in the literary texts of European and Euro-American women, there has been minimal attention to the same theme in Africana women's texts. It is the argument of this project that, in the texts contemplated, madness is often represented as an act of resistance and empowerment. This has tended to be a troubling concept for many Western thinkers since insanity is perceived as weakness and a result of loss of control; yet out of the novels of Africana women arises a theory of madness as empowering that speaks across cultures and waters. The project is divided into five chapters, which illuminate representations, manifestations, and activities of madness and "mad" characters, in the literature of Africana women.;The texts this project explores include Erna Brodber's Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home; Bessie Head's A Question of Power ; Adrienne Kennedy's Funnyhouse of a Negro; Myriam Warner-Vieyra's Juletane; Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy; Gayl Jones' Eva's Man; Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions; Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy; and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Some attention is given to Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place ; Tess Onwueme's Tell It to Women; Ama Ata Aidoo's Our Sister Killjoy; Audre Lorde's poem "Power"; and Grace Nichols' poem "Days That Fell."...