Paper short abstract:

Paulina Chiziane’s Niketche (2002) and O Alegre Canto da Perdiz (2013) show how and to what extent women (and their corpo-realities) are affected by the phallogocentric conception of religion and the divinity, her feminine translation of Mozambican tradition aiming at gender decolonization.

Paper long abstract:

For a human community to last over time, the relations between its members are regulated by symbolic devices that not only structure hierarchies, but also create pedagogical, ethical and moral, political, and legal models – which in turn forge collective and individual identity (Bourdieu 2014). Among these tools, a special place belongs to religions. At a more superficial level, it is possible to assign them an educational function, being the crucible of behavioural codes and conventions reproduced in everyday community life (Boutchich 2016; Mafuassa 2018). A closer look highlights the phallogocentric skeleton that underlies the principles and discourses on which the cults are based. This means that we can recognise a predilection for the phallus, for the male element, in all processes of signification. As a result, not only does the dominant view give centrality to masculinity to the detriment of female images and representations, but also the biopolitics imposed by religion will be inscribed onto female bodies in a stigmatising way. Not only do Paulina Chiziane’s "Niketche" (2002) and "O Alegre Canto da Perdiz" (2013) show how and to what extent women (and women’s corpo-reality) are affected by this way of conceiving worship and the divinity. The author also constructs an onto-epistemological counterpoint to the predominant phallogocentrism in the religious sphere. In fact, she negotiates women's position/ality by carrying out a female / feminine translation of some fundamental aspects of the African / Mozambican tradition, her aim being gender decolonization.