Challenging Patriarchy and Reimagining Womanhood: Afrocentric and Postmodern Aesthetics in Ifeoma Chinwuba’s African Romance (Published)
Ifeoma Chinwuba’s African Romance, a single-breath choreo-poem that challenges patriarchal structures and reimagines female agency, remains underexplored despite its Afrocentric engagement with gender conflict, particularly within the institution of marriage. This qualitative study adopts an eclectic theoretical framework, combining postmodernism and Catherine Acholonu’s theory of Motherism, to examine how Chinwuba deploys dramatic, poetic, and postmodern techniques—particularly eclecticism, intertextuality, pornography, parody, and madness—to interrogate gender relations and expose infidelity, narcissism, moral relativism, and broader socio-political dysfunction. Through these formal and thematic strategies, the poem foregrounds the fragmented realities of contemporary gender dynamics while simultaneously critiquing the patriarchal ideologies that sustain female marginalisation and familial instability. Mallama, the central figure of the choreo-poem, emerges as a counter-stereotypical female subject who resists objectification, rejects blind tolerance of toxic relational structures, and challenges male chauvinism, while affirming the dignity of womanhood, the sanctity of marriage, and the ethical value of family. Rather than advocating gender antagonism or separatism, African Romance advances a motherist vision of gender complementarity grounded in mutual respect, cooperation, and relational accountability. By synthesising postmodern critique with Afrocentric feminist reconstruction, Chinwuba transforms the choreo-poem into a subversive and dialogic space through which alternative models of equitable and harmonious gender relations are imagined.
Keywords: Afrocentric feminist ideologies, Intertextuality, gender complementarity, gender dynamics, postmodern aesthetics
Bible and Literature: Bible as the Urtext of Medical Sciences (Published)
African and European literary scholars focus on serious issues in the society ranging from love, horror to challenges in the world especially leadership and their excesses through their writings. However, scanty attention has been paid to synergy between Literature and Medicine. Therefore, this paper deciphers both Literature and Medicine particularly the benefits of Bible as Literature to Medicine vice versa considering few verses in the Pentateuch. According to Allen Graham’s view of intertextuality, a text or idea that emanates from existing texts as urtext is considered to be the source of new text ( knowledge, or discipline). Findings revealed that Semmelweis Ignaz, a medical expert (father of hand washing in Gynecology) got his research from Bible- Leviticus 15:13 as Supreme Being instructed Moses to ask people to cleanse or wash themselves from any sickness or ailment with water. In addition, Zipporah, one of the earliest surgeons in Exodus 4:25 used a sharp stone to cut off the foreskin of her son succesfully without complication(s). This could serve as urtext to modern surgery. Therefore, this paper reveals the synergy between Literature or Bible and Medicine. It is recommended that literary scholars and medical experts should always read Bible to navigate for successful and promising Literature and Medicine.
Keywords: Intertextuality, biblical inscription, literature and medicine, urtext