Matripotency: Ìyá, in Philosophical Concepts and Sociopolitical Institutions

Abstract

In my analysis of Oseetura, a chapter of Ifá and a myth of origin, I began to articulate Yorùbá epistemology through the category of Ìyáá. But because the theoretical categories employed to discuss society derive from Western social sciences, deeply rooted in a eurocentered culture, the challenge of writing about an endogenous African epistemology is apparent. For a start, the words Ìyáá or Yèyé are normally glossed as the English word “mother.” This translation is highly problematic because it distorts the original meaning of Ìyáá in the Yorùbá context failing to capture the core meaning of the term because dominant theoretical approaches to motherhood—feminist and nonfeminist alike—have represented the institution as a gendered one. In Western societies, focusing on the sexual dimorphism of the human body, gender constructs are introduced as the fundamental way in which the human anatomy is to be understood in the social world. Hence, gender is socially constructed as two hierarchically organized, binarily opposed categories in which the male is superior and dominant, and the female is subordinated and inferior. From this perspective then, motherhood is a paradigmatic gendered institution. The category mother is perceived to be embodied by women who are subordinated wives, weak, powerless, and relatively socially marginalized. Yorùbá understanding of the sociospiritual category of Ìyáá is different because in origin it did not derive from notions of gender as I showed in the last chapter.

Afìmọ̀ f’obìnrin, Iye wa táa pé nímọ̀

Afìmọ̀ jẹ t’Ọṣun o, Iye wa táa pé nímọ̀

Ǹjẹ́, ẹ jẹ́ ká wólẹ̀ f’obìnrin

Obìnrin ló bí wa

Ka wa to dènìyàn

Ẹ jẹ́ ká wólẹ̀ f’obìnrin

Obìnrin lọ́ b’Ọ́ ba

K’ọ́ ba ó tó d’Òrìṣà (excerpt of Oseetura)¹

We give knowledge to the female, our Ìyá who incarnate knowledge

We call Ọṣun Knowledge, our Ìyá who incarnate knowledge

Let us submit to Ìyáá

It is Ìyáá who gave birth to us

Before we became human beings

Let us submit to Ìyáá

The Female gave birth to the sovereign

Before the sovereign became a God. (My translation)

Parts of this chapter have been published before and can be found in the following publications: “Abiyamo: Theorizing African Motherhood,” in Jenda: A Journal of Gender and African Women’s Studies, Issue 4, 1 (2003); “Conceptualizing Gender: The Eurocentric Foundations of Feminist Concepts and the Challenge of African Epistemologies,” in Jenda: A Journal of Gender and African Women’s Studies 2, no. 1 (2002); “Beyond Gendercentric Models: Restoring Motherhood to discourses of African art and Aesthetics,” in Gender Epistemologies in Africa. and “Decolonizing the Intellectual and Quotidian: Yoruba Scholar(ship) and in Gender Epistemologies in Africa”.