A Psychoanalytic Examination of Visual Art as a Tool of Protesting Hegemonic Masculinities in Nurrudin Farah’s "Hiding in Plain Sight" and Yvonne Adhiambo Owour’s "Dust"

Abstract

This paper examines the role of art in propagating, challenging and reversing hegemonic masculinities. Art in this context is a form of expression that encompasses music, painting, photography and sculpturing among others. Artistic expressions by women who cannot physically confront the hegemonic masculinities serve as an avenue through which the muted voices of the dominated women are voiced, while also acting as a vortex through which the hegemonic male exercises his domination over the vulnerable woman. The paper is thus an investigation of how art is used either as a platform for advancing hegemonic masculinity and/or confronting and challenging male hegemony. It focuses on the characters who express themselves through art as portrayed in Nuruddin Farah’s Hiding in Plain Sight (2014) and Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s Dust (2014). Artistic expressions in the two texts are depicted as an articulation of the characters’ imagination, some of which are meant to fill the void created through a dominated, unspoken past. The muted past constitutes the unspoken memories of the atrocities committed by hegemonic males, analyzed through the psychoanalytic theory. The paper makes the assumption that art is a representation of repressed memories or wishes stored in the artist’s unconscious self that are expressed to the conscious self through the artistic expressions where the dominated characters deliver a subtle message of defiance against the socio-culturally constructed patriarchal structures. The paper therefore concludes that in pursuit of freedom from gender binary antagonisms, art as an aspect of culture is a platform through which either domination is exercised and/or challenged by dominated characters to claim their space in society.