PHALLIC POWER AND THE POLITICS OF INFERTILITY IN THE AFRICAN LITERARY IMAGINATION: READING AYỌ̀BÁMI ADÉBÁYỌ̀’S STAY WITH ME AND FLORA NWAPA’S ONE IS ENOUGH

Abstract

Male infertility remains a largely invisible yet significant reproductive health challenge in many African societies especially in Nigeria, where patriarchal norms equate masculinity with virility and disproportionately assign the burden of childlessness to women. While existing scholarship has largely emphasized the feminization of infertility, less attention has been paid to how male infertility destabilizes dominant constructions of masculinity and exposes the fragility of phallic power. Addressing this gap, this study examines the representation of male infertility and its socio-cultural implications in Adébáyọ’s  Stay with Me and Nwapa’s One is Enough within the broader African literary imagination. Adopting a qualitative interpretive methodology grounded in close textual reading and thematic analysis, the study draws on spatial theory, particularly the works of Lefebvre (1991) and Soja (1996), to analyse how domestic, ritual, and communal spaces function as sites of patriarchal surveillance and control. These spaces render women’s reproductive bodies hyper-visible while simultaneously concealing male infertility within zones of silence and denial. Complementing this spatial framework, African feminist perspectives—especially Kolawole’s (1997) African womanism and Nnaemeka’s (2004) nego-feminism—provide critical tools for examining negotiation, dialogic engagement, and the reconfiguration of shared reproductive responsibility. The analysis reveals that Akin’s concealed impotence and the erasure of Obiora’s reproductive accountability exemplify how patriarchal ideologies sustain male privilege while displacing the social and psychological burden of infertility onto women. By interrogating the narrative strategies through which male infertility is masked, displaced, and silenced, this study argues that phallic power operates not merely as a symbol of virility but as a structural and spatialized mechanism of authority. The study also demonstrates that African literature offers a critical discursive space for exposing the contradictions of patriarchal masculinity and for reimagining infertility as a shared, dialogic, and socially accountable experience.