Thomas Sankara et la condition féminine: un discours révolutionnaire?

2.1.2. The guilty woman

True during image of the woman - victim, intended to move the public on the female fate, the guilty woman is a construction necessary to the dialectical movement of the thought of Sankara. The guilty woman is identified as that which was member of old associations pre-revolutionists. Sankara uses of irony to ridicule it and disparage it. It affirms that before the revolution, the women were « organized in folk groups. »^150(*) To compare a political association to a folk group shows the futile, surface character of its approach. The folklore, moreover, is a passeist since it is based on the recall of the traditions. The guilty woman is the woman passeist, and as the revolutionists of 1789 said it, a woman attached to Ancien Régime. Sankara finds the women guilty « very subjective. »^151(*) This insult which takes source in a vocabulary Marxist returns « these women » likely to thwart the emancipation. They are partisanes of one « primary education feminism »^152(*) founded on one « obliteration of the significances and authorizes by there all the audacities semantics of feminism (...) »^153(*) What results in asserting for the woman the right to be male. The guilty woman will thus be associated a network of negative terms taking again essentially the defects identified like those of the woman against revolutionist. Sankara denounces thus certain behaviors deviating nonin conformity with the austerity and revolutionary morals. « They are all these meannesses like the jealousy, the exhibitionnism, criticisms ceaseless and free, negative and without principles, the denigration of the ones by the others, the subjectivism with flower of skin, the competitions »^154(*) The deictic « these » a fundamental role in this passage plays. As a demonstrative adjective, it indicates with the public the female meannesses, but it goes further, it denounces and can, for this reason, being accompanied by a gesture of contempt. The defects of these women are indeed méprisables, it is well what the speech of Sankara wants to translate.

Always using of metaphors, Sankara specifies the portrait of the guilty woman. She becomes in her speech « purses of speculative values » or « travelling safes ». This feature highlights its cupidity. Indeed, the economic capacity enables him to make drifts.^155(*) Sankara reproaches him for being slave « vulgar cupidity and filth greed materialist »^156(*)

Another metaphor is intended to cause the dislike of the public towards these venal women. It compares the woman to mud: « these women are dangerous sticky, stinking muds »^157(*). This image is perfectly infâmante. Mud, unlike the ground or of clay, cannot be used for construction or the culture. The qualifier « stinking » shows how the rot gained these women. The term « sticky » denounces their viscous character, sticking. They are not revolutionary source of dash, and since they are « sticky muds », they can even act as contrary direction. They are presented as women reactionaries « démobilisatrices of the revolutionary dashes. »^158(*)

The guilty woman is finally the woman that Sankara associates the idea « sponsor ». For her daughter, it is « more its owner that her mom »^159(*) This implies that the woman cultivates the dependence on the level of her daughter. Sankara indicates it clearly and simply: « they are the women who perpetuate the complex of the sexes, as of the beginnings of the education and the training of the character. »^160(*)

These savage criticisms against the women make it possible the speech to be prevailed of a certain objectivity.

* ¹⁵⁰ Ibid, p. 115

* ¹⁵¹ Ibid, p. 115

* ¹⁵² GAKUNZI (D), COp cit., p. 223.

* ¹⁵³ GAKUNZI (D), COp cit., p. 227.

* ¹⁵⁴ GAKUNZI (D), COp cit., p. 236.

* ¹⁵⁵ GAKUNZI (D), COp cit., p. 236.

* ¹⁵⁶ GAKUNZI (D), COp cit., p. 236.

* ¹⁵⁷ GAKUNZI (D), COp cit., p. 229.

* ¹⁵⁸ GAKUNZI (D), COp cit., p. 240.

* ¹⁵⁹ GAKUNZI (D), COp cit., p. 231.

* ¹⁶⁰ GAKUNZI (D), COp cit., p. 240.