Lynn Nottage’s “Ruined” and Gender Coloniality

It has long been assumed that the roots of the concept of womanhood are archaic and redundant, without understanding the violence of gender coloniality and how imperialism has forced a gendered gaze into various cultures, specifically that of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The foundation of womanhood rests on the concept of settler colonialism, the way it has limited and erased the fluidity embedded in many cultures and forced it to be very masculine or very feminine. Judith Butler writes that “Gender ought not to be construed as a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow, rather gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts.”(Butler, 20 ) This was also the idea of ‘gender’ in pre-colonial africa, as they did not subscribe to a binary before european intervention. However with patriachal colonization came the capture, rape, exclusion and subordination of women, leaving them with without ownership of their identity. In Lynn Nottage’s Ruined, Mama Nadi is a multifaceted character who embodies all aspects of gender coloniality. She is simultaneously a progressive figure trying to resist said violence, a perpetuator of this violence and a victim to the violent ways gender has been prescribed in neo colonial Congo. Through this character, Nottage argues that since gender and identity are constructed by patriarchal and colonial violence, Mama Nadi - like all the women her character represents - will never be able to navigate her identity and place in a society that has not made room for it.

Amidst a society undergoing brutal upheaval, Mama Nadi’s brothel and bar serves as a place of refuge, not only keeping the handful of women she has under her care safe, but providing a place where her diverse clients, from soldiers to rebels can come in and forget about the war happening just outside the doors. More importantly Mama Nadi's is a place of business, which she reminds us of, when she claims that she is “running a business not a mission” (Nottage, 1042) after Christian asks her to house two girls as a favor, which she eventually agrees to. It’s a space she’s built herself, that represents her single mindedness, tenacity and an independence from men. “You men kill me. You come in here, drink your beer, take your pleasure, and then wanna judge the way I run my “business.” .....they’d rather be here, any day than back out there in their villages where they are taken without regard....And I am without mercy, is what you're saying?. I didn't come to this place as Mama Nadi, I found her the same way miners find their wealth in the muck. I stumbled off of that road with two twigs to start a fire. I don’t give a damn what you think. This is my place, Mama Nadi’s.”(Nottage, 1062) Mama Nadi is arguably proggresive, as a businesswoman and as a maternal figure, she uses the space she created as a safe space and a claim on her identity. This is nothing no one can take away from her, or so she thinks.

Mama Nadi’s progressiveness also shows in her efforts to keep her bar and brothel as neutral space. Her rule of having soldier’s empty their weapons before they enter, lying to the government officials that she doesn't do business with rebels and even banning any talk of war saying “Professor stop. Leave the philosophizing and preaching to the wretched politicians. I won’t have it here.”(Nottage,1059) almost emasculates the men that come into the bar. By denying representations of the war in her brothel, she denies the existence of it and the lack of agency and power it does to her and her business. Mama Nadi’s valuation and protection of her agency is the only way she can survive and survival is key in a war torn state when you’re trying to make money. In scene 5, after a terse exchange with Osembenga, she reprimands Sophie for how she treats the commander, saying “I don’t care if he was the man who slit your mother’s throat. Do you understand me? You could have gotten all of us killed.”(Nottage,1061) In this same scene, she retorts to Christian “What if Osembenga had been more than offended? What then? Who would protect my business if he turned on me? Is it but for the grace of God that he didn't beat her to the ground. And now I have to give away business to keep him and his filthy soldiers happy.”(Nottage,1061) It might come off as cruel to put the comfort of the women in her care beneath her business but she understands that there is only so much power she can yield in her space, and being on the wrong side of the colonial systems puts her at risk. Gloria Chukwu in Colonialism and African Womanhood explains to us that “African women demonstrated their agency in various ways, including circumventing the laws, or selecting aspects that protected their interests, or negotiating with male authorities to minimize their negative impact.”(Chukwu,191) all describing the ways Mama Nadi fought for her space, her name and her identity.

Mama Nadi might be progressive but she’s also a perpetuator of the systemic violence she tries to personally avoid. Nadi capitalizes on the war, sexual violence and “exploits their body to get her needs, and she represents the colonializing medium of these powerless women”(Saleh, 6) In the Scene below, Salima and Sophie share their grievances about their lives underneath Mama Nadi, forcing themselves to follow her instructions of getting thrown out.

“SALIMA. I wanna go home!
SOPHIE. Now, look at me. Look here, if you leave, where will you
go? Huh? Sleep in the bush? Scrounge for food in a stinking refugee camp.
SALIMA. But I wanna — !
SOPHIE. What? Be thrown back out there? Where will you go? Huh?
Your husband? Your village? How much goodness did they show you?
SALIMA. (Wounded.) Why did you say that?
SOPHIE. I‘m sorry, but you know it‘s true. There is a war going
on, and it isn‘t safe for a woman alone. You know this! It‘s better this way.” (Nottage,1047)

This exchange between Sophie and Salima shows how clearly they feel displaced in a space that is supposed to be home to them, and the entire exchange parallels the feeling of displacement women have in society built on gender based violence.

Alicia Decker asks us in African Women and the Postcolonial State, “If the postcolonial state is masculinist because most african leaders are men, what happens when increasing the number of women in politics? Does the African state become less patriarchal?”(Decker, 1142) Though not a political position, Mama Nadi’s is political in the sense that it's a place that recognizes her power, however little. This doesn’t mean it - ‘it’ being the space, the women, Mama Nadi as the figurehead - are safe from systemic oppression. Or that Mama Nadi herself isn't guilty in mimicking the exact problems that are being enacted on her by war and men. Instead she benefits from this coloniality, creating a space where the women underneath her do not have agency over their bodies, replicating the same feeling of loss she feels from being “ruined”. This control extends to the way she sees these women’s bodies as commodities, actively fighting to avoid keeping Sophie because she is "ruined" , not seeing any value in Salima, claiming that within the "2-for-1" package deal Christian gave her between the two girls, Sophie is the one worth it. It’s obvious that to Mama Nadi the girls are nothing more than property, things to be used to help her boost her business. This gaze of viewing women as mere “things” is something that has been imposed as a result of gender coloniality. Mama Nadi runs her business from the male gaze, buying women she thinks men will find appealing, viewing them the same way men would, owning their bodies and profits made of these bodies and in turn perpetuating the violence of colonization.

Audre Lorde reminds us that “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change”(Lorde, 27) yet this is something we so often see Mama Nadi try to do throughout the play. The central thought to Nadi’s need for control, and power is to be able to beat the male society she’s in, at their own game.``I want a powerful slip of paper that says I can cut down forests and dig holes and build to the moon if I choose. I don’t want someone to turn up at my door, and take my life from me. Not ever again. But tell, how does a woman like me get a piece of land, without having to pick up a fucking gun?” (Nottage,1052) Here we see that even as proggresive as Nadi is, she’s realizing that money and status can only do so much in a society that does not recognize you as human and was made to subjugate all trials of claiming an identity for yourself. By asking how a woman like herself can get a piece of land Mama Nadi is that she is a victim of gendered institutions made to only benefit men. Jane Parpart and Kathleen Staudt explain to us in Women and the State in Africa that “Whether in its indeginous, colonial or modern forms, the state has been overwhelmingly controlled by men; this control has translated into laws, policies, and spending patterns which not coincidentally benefit men. Women’s seemingly personal experiences are structured by policies, most of which are apparently gender neutral. But these policies are in fact experienced very differently by men and women”(Parpart,52)

In the last scene of the play Mama Nadi admits that she too is a victim of rape and absue, exclaiming to Christian that “I’m ruined”(Nottage, 1065) not only is she a victim of the system as a business woman but she has personal evidence of power and autonmy being stripped from her body. As readers we’re finally able to understand the connection between all of Mama Nadi’s decisions and how it can be interpreted as a result of trauma. This trauma is the connection in which Mama Nadi is able to build her brothel from, to reclaim some sort of identity that goes beyond what men have taken from, It’s why she exerts control over other female and male bodies in exchange for money. It’s why she struggles for neutrality, why she extends grace to Sophie after claiming to only be a business woman, and also why she isn't able to see herself as someone that can be fully loved by Christian. This need that Mama Nadi has to rely on herself and no one else when she tells Christian “Do I look like I need protection?” is because she knows she cannot trust that someone so intricately tied to her downfall can be of any value in helping to improve her life (beyond money). When Christian finds out that Mama Nadi is “ruined” he says “God, I don’t know what these men did to you, but I'm sorry for it. I might be an idiot for saying so, but I think we, and I speak as a man, can do better” Here Nottage sets up a very questionable redemption for gender coloniality but things like these cannot be fixed by mere words and empty promises alone. This apology however almost turns the tide to a discussion of decolonization. Nottage slightly questions what we can expect from men when they refuse to see women through the european gendered gaze and as real people with real agency over their own bodies and minds.

Throughout this play Nottage wants us to question agency, and identity of women in a neo colonial, patriarchal country. None of the women that Mama Nadi represents - the progressive capitalistic business woman, the maternal figure, the perpetuator of gender violence, the victim - hold any sense of who they truly are, their “freedom” is based on on a system that was never built to hold space for them, let alone acknowledge that they are people. Nottage brings this reality right to our doorsteps and urges us to dissect how colonialism, an inherently masculine role- as it was carried out by workforces of mostly men- interferes with every single aspect of african female life. From domestic work, to ownership of space and body, every single aspect of the colonized black female body is viewed as passive, public and grotesquely obtainable and this is the result of a specifically racialized and gendered european gaze. In The Coloniality of Gender, Maria Lugones, much like Lynn Nottage, wants to shine a light on the indifference that most of the world has towards the systematic violence inflicted on women of color. “This indifference is insidious since it places tremendous barriers in the path of the struggles of women of color for our own freedom, integrity, and wellbeing and in the path of the correlative struggles towards communal integrity. The latter is crucial for communal struggles towards liberation, since it is their backbone. The indifference is found both at the level of everyday living and at the level of theorizing of both oppression and liberation.”(Lugones, 1)

This passive indifference that the world takes when coming in contact with issues of Black women, African black women in this context is the reason why countries like the Democratic republic of Congo can have civil unrest for years, prey on it’s women and children without any consequences for their actions. Only when the world is finally able to let go of their racialized gender views will women the likes of Mama Nadi, Salima, Sophie and Josephine be able to receive sympathy, help and more importantly independence and agency.

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Works Cited

Nottage, Lynn. Ruined. Nick Hern Books, 2012.

Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal, vol. 40, no. 4, 1988, pp. 519–531. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3207893. Accessed 18 May 2021

Parpart, Jane. Women and the State in Africa. Edited by Kathleen Staudt, Lynne Rienner Pub, 1986.

Chuku G. (2018) Colonialism and African Womanhood. In: Shanguhyia M., Falola T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of African Colonial and Postcolonial History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59426-6_7

Lorde, Audre. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Ed. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. 110- 114. 2007. Print.

Decker A.C. (2018) African Women and the Postcolonial State. In: Shanguhyia M., Falola T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of African Colonial and Postcolonial History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59426-6_44

Mohammed Saleh, Hassan. “Gendered Corporality and Place in Lynn Nottage’s Ruined: A Postcolonial Approach.” Al-Adab Journal, vol. 1, no. 122, 2018, pp. 1–16. Crossref, doi:10.31973/aj.v1i122.231.

Lugones, Maria. “The Coloniality of Gender.” Worlds & Knowledges Otherwise, 2008, globalstudies.trinity.duke.edu/sites/globalstudies.trinity.duke.edu/files/file-attach ments/v2d2_Lugones.pdf.