Motherhood, Authority, and Power in the Senegambia

This book presents the political and social history of the position of the lingeer (female ruler) of 5 states of the Senegambia covering over 6 centuries. The author offers an interpretation of the history within a hermeneutic of Africana liberation and argue that the European colonizers’ ignorance (or ignoring) of pre-existing governmental structures in the Senegambia created an ongoing existential crisis for people in the region.In the work, the author demonstrates how a dual-gender authority system provided a significant metaphysical issue to Western social organization through an interrogation of the ontology of power and who could and should wield it within governing structures. Wolof and Serrer theories on the essentialism of power the essentialism of gendered authority systems as male power is incapable of existing without female power. The book includes a focus on the lingeer as a ruling counterpoint to the male rulers explaining how this gendered authority system was tempered more in the Wolof kingdoms with their strong Islamic influence as opposed to the stronger structures of gendered authority in the Serrer kingdoms with stronger influence from the traditional religions. The evolution of the institution over the centuries is also examined. Finally, the author explores the dual-gendered authority system as a potential remedy for current African governments and concludes with a discussion on how the dual-gendered power was exported from Africa into the Western Hemisphere as a result of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

Douglas H. Thomas is associate professor of African and African American Studies at the State University of New York at Brockport since 2017. Trained as an historian of West African Islam, Dr. Thomas received his Ph.D. in History from Georgia State University in 2010 with the dissertation entitled "The Making of a Mahdi: Limamou Laye and the Layenne Tariqa of Senegal" which later became his first book Sufism, Mahdism, and Nationalism: Limamou Laye and the Layennes of Senegal. In 2018, Dr. Thomas co-edited along with Temi Alanmu, the encyclopedia African Religions: Beliefs and Practices through History. Within the past few years, Dr. Thomas's research interest has turned toward the authority/governing structures of the Wolof and Serrer peoples who live in what is now known as Senegal and Gambia. Particularly, Dr. Thomas's interest is how gender is interwoven into the authority systems of West Africa. The first result of this research was 2021 article "The Lingeer's Jihad: Challenging a Male-Normative Reading of African History."