Radical feminism and androcide in Nawal El Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero

Addison, Catherine

Radical feminism and androcide in Nawal El Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero

dc.contributor.author	Addison, Catherine
dc.coverage.conference	issn
dc.date.accessioned	2025-12-05T08:02:06Z
dc.date.available	2025-12-05T08:02:06Z
dc.date.issued	2020
dc.departmentName	English
dc.description.abstract	Woman at Point Zero, by Nawal El Saadawi, has been neglected by African feminist commentary, probably because of its radicalism. 20th-century African feminisms, under different names and descriptions, generally advocated a moderate approach to gender relations, refusing to exclude or stigmatize men. However, a change is underway in the attitudes of younger African feminists, especially in South Africa, as the recent #MenAreTrash and #AmINext hashtags and protests about rape culture have demonstrated. The protagonist of Saadawi’s novel, Firdaus, who discovers her true vocation in the action of killing a man, matches and outstrips the anger of these younger feminists. So radical is Woman at Point Zero that it appears to advocate androcide as a response to patriarchy, which, to Firdaus, represents multiple types of abuse and injustice, including capitalism. This paper explores degrees of feminist radicalism as well as developments in African feminist thought, before considering Woman at Point Zero as an example of the radical extreme whose time may have come. The novel exists, if not as a provocation to direct action, at least as a terrible warning to men – and members of other genders – and hence as a trigger of radical change.
dc.faculty	Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
dc.format.preprint	No
dc.identifier.citation	Addison, C., 2020. Radical feminism and androcide in Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero. English Studies in Africa, 63(2), pp.1-13.
dc.identifier.issn	1943-8117 (online)
dc.identifier.issn	0013-8398 (print)
dc.identifier.other	https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2020.1852683
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10530/58508
dc.inproceedings	issn
dc.issuenumber	63 / 2
dc.keynote	issn
dc.language.iso	en
dc.pages	1 - 13
dc.peerreviewed	Yes
dc.publisher	Taylor & Francis
dc.subject	Nawal El Saadawi
dc.subject	Woman at Point Zero
dc.subject	African feminism
dc.subject	Radicalism
dc.subject	Androcide
dc.title	Radical feminism and androcide in Nawal El Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero
dc.title.journal	English Studies in Africa
dc.type	Journal Article
dspace.entity.type	Publication
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