BOTTOM POWER AS A WEAPON FOR REVOLUTION: A STUDY OF BUTAKE’S LAKE GOD AND ARISTOPHANES’ LYSISRATA

ABSTRACT Lake God and Lysistrata are two plays, which are far apart in time: one is European and classical while the other is African/ Cameroonian and post – colonial. Although these plays are far apart in time, they are similar in one aspect: in these two plays, the playwrights show women using a sex strike as a weapon for revolution. This paper therefore sets out to evaluate the role of female sexuality and power in the politics of change in Greek antiquity and post – colonial Cameroon. Guided by the feminist literary approach, this article is predicated on the assumption that Aristophanes and Butake are male writers who seem to present societies where women are capable of bringing a difference, a revolution or change through a sex strike. The paper reveals that as Chinweizu says in his seminal book Anatomy of Female Power:A Masculinist Dissection of Matriarchy, it is the woman who rules man in this world through her womb and also as Wolfgand Lederer points out in his germinal book The Fear of Woman, man is really afraid of women.