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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Eunice Fonyuy Fombele
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2016.04.004
University of Buea, Buea, Cameroon
This paper underscores the need for new plausible myths that redefine gender relations in an attempt to revalue female assertion, ethical values, and human development. This creative process presents a different perspective from the views of some feminist theorists who have seen myth as a regressive and oppressive structure. The focus, in this paper, is to illustrate how in her chant-novel It Shall Be of Jasper and Coral Liking appropriates the productive force of myths through the misovire consciousness and ritual structure for her gender politics and for promoting ethical values and the culture of human development. In this regard, she decodes existing negative myths and reconstructs new gender myths that redefine gender relations, celebrate what she calls women’s “cosmic force” and through ritual cleansing, reinvents a new language of beauty and a new race of Jasper and Coral. Thus, guided by the tenets of deconstruction and the gender relations frameworks, this paper defends the thesis that Liking’s chant-novel through myth invention and revision combines and fuses traditional and modern aesthetics, thematic and structural elements that she uses to deconstruct social and gender relations. The contention is that in negotiating plausible gender relations for men and women in Africa, Liking’s story and structure incorporate the cleansing, cathartic effect of Bassa ritual performance into the narrative.
mythoform, misovire consciousness, feminist revision, gender conceptual renewal, human development
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