Colonial Wounds, Patriarchal Domination: A bell hooks (1984) Reading of God’s Bits of Wood by O. Sembène (1962)

Karim Dembélé; Issika Diarra

doi:10.65921/98qtgg13

Authors

Karim Dembélé Yambo Ouologuem University Author
Issika Diarra Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.65921/98qtgg13

Keywords:

African masculinity, colonial capitalism, psychic wound, patriarchal domination, women's resistance

Abstract

God's Bits of Wood (1960/1962) has been widely celebrated for its portrayal of women's collective resistance, yet the psychic wound colonial capitalism inflicts on African masculinity, and its displacement into domestic domination, remains underexplored. This gap raises the problem of how Sembène (1962) represents African masculinity as simultaneously wounded by colonial subjugation and complicit in patriarchal domination over women, and how women's resistance answers both. The article's general objective is to trace this double dynamic across three movements: colonial emasculation, displaced patriarchal compensation, and women's counter-resistance. The study draws primarily on bell hooks's (1984)theory of interlocking domination, supplemented by Frantz Fanon's account of colonial alienation. Methodologically, it adopts a qualitative, text-based close reading of key episodes alongside these theoretical categories. The findings reveal that patriarchal domination in the novel functions not as inherited privilege but as compensation for colonial wounding, while women's solidarity constitutes a deliberate counter-wound targeting both colonial and patriarchal structures at once.

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Author Biography

Issika Diarra

Associates professor at university Yambo Ouologuem.

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