Abstract
This article examines the portrayal of matricentric feminism as well as
expounds the issues of mythology and how both informed each other in Umaru
Landan and Dexter Lyndersay’s Shaihu Umar. It argues that Fatima’s sojourn
in search of her son, Shaihu, is propelled by a will borne out of motherhood
and given strength by supernatural forces. The methodological base of the
study is qualitative in nature appropriating the concepts of matricentric
feminism and mythology as structural scaffoldings while Jacques Derrida’s
concept of deconstruction will be used as analytical framework. This concept
attempts to challenge the interpretation of a text based on conventional notions
of stability of human self, the external world, and of language and meaning.
The philosophy of existence of the eponymous character is revealed in the
play. The article tries to probe if the matricentric elements exuded by Fatima
(Shaihu’s mother) are just a will tied to motherhood or if it is given strength
by the metaphysics of presence and the messianic.