Body and seniority: thinking ethical non bio-logical limites with Oyèrónkẹ Oyěwùmí

Abstract

The present article aims to present the arguments of Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí in her work The invention of women: constructing an african sense for western gender discourses" (1997), to explore the relationship between the body and ethics in worldview and cosmoperception. In order to demonstrate that Western epistemology imposes upon itself and other peoples the universality of the gender category and the social problems arising from this gendering, the Yoruba epistemologist writes The invention of women with a dialectical character, where her critique is demonstrated as she describes indigenous Yoruba attire. The objective is to show that for these people, the body did not determine social roles before colonization. The writing of this text begins with her defense that gender is a socially created category but was not originally a part of all peoples. To present the complexity of oyewumian thought, categories of worldview and cosmoperception are revisited through the alignment of what the author elucidates about bio-logic, bodily reasoning, somatocentrality, and seniority. The presentation of these concepts concludes how each culture shapes its ethical bonds.