In the Name of the Father… Masculinity, Gender Politics and National Identity Formation in Postcolonial Nigeria
Abstract
This paper negotiates masculinity, gender politics and national identity in Nigeria and foregrounds the sexist character and temperament of national symbols and emblems which inscribe gender and sexual practices within the patterns of socio-political and cultural life. The paper argues that Nigeria is a phallocentric society where traditional culture and modes of epistemology still dominate even with the advances of modernity and globalization. It locates the ambiguities, ambivalences and contradictions within the Nigerian nation-state in multiple cultural imperatives which privilege masculinity over femininity deploying the Nigerian national anthem and pledge as analytic categories. As veritable markers of national identity, the paper contends that the anthem and pledge constitute a representational site for the contestation of gender politics and ideology and the inherent paradoxes this conflictual gender reality orchestrates. It concludes by interrogating the sexist and (en)gendered ideological formations internalized in the anthem and pledge, advocates a democratization of the gender space and the re-imagining of gender relations in national identity formation strategies in postcolonial Nigeria.
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