ISSN 2360-7998
Abstract
This study examines the representation of war-induced trauma, widowhood, and womanhood in selected African dramatic texts, with particular reference to Nigerian and South Sudanese contexts. It is grounded in feminist trauma theory, supported by postcolonial feminist and performance-based critical frameworks, to investigate how theatre constructs and communicates women’s experiences of armed conflict. The study is motivated by the recognition that war narratives in African literature often privilege masculine experiences while marginalising or oversimplifying women’s psychological, emotional, and socio-political suffering. Using a qualitative textual analysis approach, the study closely reads Women of Owu alongside selected South Sudanese refugee and community theatre performances. The analysis focuses on key thematic concerns, including psychological trauma, displacement, memory, silence, widowhood, gendered violence, and female resilience. The study draws on the theoretical insights of scholars such as Cathy Caruth, Judith Herman, and bell hooks to interpret trauma as both a psychological rupture and a socially constructed experience shaped by gender and power relations. Findings reveal that war disproportionately affects women, exposing them to layered forms of violence, including displacement, loss of spouses, sexual exploitation, and emotional fragmentation. Widowhood emerges as a central site of compounded trauma, often leading to social exclusion and economic vulnerability. However, the study also finds that women are not merely passive victims; they demonstrate resilience through collective solidarity, storytelling, memory preservation, and symbolic resistance within performance spaces. The study concludes that African theatre serves as a critical site for articulating suppressed gendered experiences of war, while feminist trauma theory provides an effective lens for uncovering the emotional and structural dimensions of violence. It further argues that comparative analysis of Nigerian and South Sudanese dramatic traditions enriches understanding of how African women negotiate survival, identity, and agency in contexts of conflict.
Keywords: Feminist Trauma Theory, African drama, war, widowhood, womanhood, Nigerian theatre, South Sudanese performance, gender and conflict, trauma studies.