Gender in Translation: Ẹfúnṣetán Aníwúrà

Abstract

The epigraph to this paper could easily be mistaken for an adulatory epithet on an altruistic system of channeling needs for the mutual benefit of all: whosoever desires Christianity can pick it up, and Christianity replenishes its store by what the convert gives up. It soon becomes apparent on close examination, however, that the poetry in the proverb conceals an uneven swap; the convert surrenders a defining substance that the belief system remakes into only what can serve its interests. The sentence patterning indicates that the convert “takes,” the belief system “takes,” and neither gives back. Christian monotheism supervises, as it were, a taking contraption that dispossesses the convert of something of value in exchange for a structure of unreciprocated, one-way acceptance. I selected this proverbial saying for the epigraph because it captures the spirit of my argument in this article: discourses of gender practices in Yorùbá life and culture are yet to consider fully how translations of categories from the language of discovery, particularly English, shape the classification and explanations of observed social phenomena. My primary evidence will be the many ways in which known snippets of the life of Ìyálóde Efúnsetán Aníwúrà (ca. 1825–1874), a high-ranking female chief in precolonial Ìbàdàn in Nigeria, are deployed in accounts of the evolution of woman-being in southwestern Nigeria.

A kìí gbà ‘gbàgbọ́ ki ‘gbàgbọ́ má gba nǹkan lọ́wọ́ ẹni (We do not take to Christianity without Christianity taking something of value from us.)