Men as Puns in the feminist African novel

The dominant hierarchy upon which the order of existence is predetermined has placed the man at the centre of creation; which is also substantiated by cultural norms that prioritized generic divides. The principles of feminism have been created to alter patriarchal hegemony in order to reconstruct the distorted female self of an egalitarian society. However, in an attempt to reconstruct these misconceptions upheld by patriarchy, most feminist texts and criticisms have denied the woman the agency of freewill and independent choices, except the continuous emphasis on feminist objectification that patriarchy seem to propagate. It is against this backdrop, that this paper interrogates the subjugation of the woman by her fellow woman and to outline a model of feminist liberation. This is consequent upon the fact that even at the disruption of patriarchy, some feminist scholars have failed to account for the role of women in using men as puns in the subjugation of their fellow women in the African novel. Consequently, this paper replicates Chinweizu’s Masculinist Dissection of Matriarchy and uses feminist-deconstruction to interrogate Ama Ata Aidoo’s Changes and Nawal El Saadawi’s A Woman at point Zero. To this effect, it submits that women are stakeholders in the structure of matriarchy and the substructure of patriarchy and men are mere puns in the structure of matriarchal subjugation of their fellow woman. The concept of pun(s) which is play on word is used in its expounded form on how women manipulate men physically and psychologically for their economic and political gains.