Naked Agency

"Baring genitalia, or the threat thereof, as a form of protest has appeared with increasing frequency across sub-Saharan African countries since the 1990s. Naked agency provides a conceptual framework for reading African women's "defiant disrobing" not as a stable, singular event, but rather as part of an ongoing struggle between victimhood and sovereignty. An act that makes claims to ritual and political power that is nevertheless performed out of abjection and vulnerability to state- and locally-sanctioned death, naked protest is fundamentally biopolitical, but also offers forms of agency that trouble the liberal subject. Diabate therefore offers ways to understand protests as situated performances. Diabate's analysis primarily considers media accounts of naked protests, from films to autobiographical accounts, novels to fine art, and beyond, bringing into focus the work cultural production does in representing naked protest. Her book situates the particularities of each instance of women's naked protest within the interactions of the indigenous, the local, and the global, emphasizing the contingent, collective, and triumphant forms of agency produced through insurgent nakedness." -- Provided by publisher.