Pre-colonial African philosopher queens shaped a gender-balanced identity

Evidence

There is also evidence of female Africans who contributed to what con- stitutes an academic feminist African philosophy since pre-colonial times. These philosopher queens had their various epistemological and philosophical con- tours, and they also contributed to the current state of the African mindset towards the value of redefining a gender-balanced African identity. While Western scholarship has indeed worked hard to bury these heroines over the years, it is our duty as African feminist scholars to resurrect their legacy through research and documentation in order to reach a gender-balanced agenda by 2063. To mention a few heroines, Yaa Asantewaa, Queen of the Ashanti Kingdom in Ghana, led an army against colonialists who had sent the Ashanti King into exile. Queen Nzinga, the reformist who fought for women to be assigned to important government positions in Angola, was the first woman to command a strong guerilla army to emancipate her people from colonialism. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 973

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• SEED: An essay could profile these philosopher queens as a recovered lineage of African feminist thought.
• XREF: Resonates with the book’s overarching project of recovering precolonial African philosophy (Tempels, Oduk).

Related

• Pre-colonial African women philosopher-queens were erased by Western scholarship (similarity 0.86)
• Pre-colonial African ethos valued women as leaders across various fronts (similarity 0.85)
• Precolonial African institutions respected the rights of women (similarity 0.83)
• Precolonial women leaders act feminist without the concept existing. (similarity 0.82)
• Pre-colonial women warlords were feminists through acts, not labels (similarity 0.82)
• Both colonial and modern African scholars have irrationalized African women’s philosophical standing (similarity 0.82)
• African philosophy shows two waves of irrationality about women’s roles (similarity 0.81)
• African philosophy has largely excluded feminism and women. (similarity 0.80)
• Two waves of bias have distorted scholarship on African women’s roles (similarity 0.80)
• African feminism is an independent philosophy, not an offshoot of Western feminism. (similarity 0.80)
• African feminism faces a double challenge from Western feminists and local anti-feminists (similarity 0.80)
• Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy considered African women only in relation to childbearing (similarity 0.79)
• Tempels only framed African women as childbearers despite pre-colonial wise women leaders. (similarity 0.79)
• African feminist epistemology is stigmatized as un-African and Westernizing. (similarity 0.78)
• Colonial racial ideology shaped gendered relations under colonial capitalism. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• The Black radical tradition originates in conserved African metaphysics transmitted as culture #expands (0.55) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1429
• Western ontology and African vitalogy can engage in reciprocal dialogue #corroborates (0.50) — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 197