CHUSS Seminar by Rev Sister Prof. Dominic Dipio

 

Although Africa is overtly perceived as a patriarchal society, close scrutiny reveals that social relationships at both mundane and symbolic levels are nuanced and more complex. Significant relationships are constructed around the mother(matriarch), whether the community is described as matriarchal/matrilineal or patriarchal/patrilineal. This documentary film, Mother Centered Africa, is one of the offshoots of my Cambridge Africa Programme for Research Excellence (CAPREx) fellowship research. Building on the thoughts of Africanist like Cheikh Anta Diop and Oyeronke Oyewumi, this research analyses folktales as art and repositories of culture where is a result of in-depth interviews with participants from diverse ethnicities in Uganda, represents gender relations in 21st century Africa as complex and non-linear.