Kanneh verses Cixous

Evaluate critically Kadiatu Kanneh's position in "Love, Mourning and Metaphor: Terms of Identity" indicating her reasons for criticising other feminists theorists. In her essay, Kanneh takes a critical view of some of the foundation stones upon which Helen Cixous builds her arguments in her seminal work "The Laugh of the Medusa". It is by developing an understanding of her critique of Cixous that best allows the reader to formulate a coherent opinion of where Kanneh …

…discourse that portrays the black African as "other" to "us". Kanneh, can then, be seen as a black feminist who believes that black women should define, or rather who have no choice than to define, their identity outside eurocentic definitions of feminism which do not recognise the unique black woman's experience. She is highly critical of the use of the body as a metaphor that ignores traditions of social exclusion and domestic subjugation of woman.