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“Homosexuality” in Africa: Issues and Debates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

Deborah P. Amory
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Extract

This article explores the recent emergence of a new subfield within African Studies: not just the study of sexuality in African contexts, but the study of “homosexuality,” or same-sex erotics and identities. I will outline some of the events that herald this new era of African Studies, and review some of the current research topics and debates. In the end, I hope to convince readers that this research deserves the support of all activist scholars within African Studies.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Issues , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , 1997 , pp. 5 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1997 

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Footnotes

*

Deborah P. Amory is an assistant professor of Anthropology at SUNY-Purchase. She has conducted research in Kenya and Tanzania over the past 15 years, and has written on the politics of Swahili identity and the history of African Studies in the United States.

References

Notes

1. Donna, Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” Feminist Studies 14(4), pp. 575-99Google Scholar. Carolyn Martin Shaw demonstrates the usefulness of this approach in her compelling analysis of the politics and poetics of colonial Kenya; see Colonial Inscriptions: Race, Sex, and Class in Kenya, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995.

2. For an early acknowledgment of that fact, see Deborah, Pellow, “Sexuality in Africa,” Trends in History 4(4), pp. 71–96, 1990 Google Scholar. For a provocative analysis of the more general anthropological silence on sexuality, see Don, Kulick, “The Sexual Life of Anthropologists: Erotic Subjectivity and Ethnographic Work,” in Taboo, Don, Kulick and Margaret, Willson, eds., pp. 1-28, New York: Routledge, 1995 Google Scholar, and Stephen O. , Murray, “The Anthropological Tradition of Explaining Away Same-Sex Sexuality When it Obtrudes on Anthropologists’ Notice,” Anthropology Today 13(3), pp. 2–5, 1997 Google Scholar.

3. Beth Maina Ahlberg makes this point in her discussion of Kikuyu sexual practices; see “Is There a Distinct African Sexuality? A Critical Response to Caldwell,” Africa 64(2):220-41, 1994 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Carolyn Martin Shaw, Colonial Inscriptions.

4. One of the four women had just published an article on lesbianism in Nigeria, which also condemned previous attacks against women. See IGLHRC Emergency Response Network, vol. VI, no. 2.

5. Mary A., Porter, “Talking at the Margins: Kenyan Discourses on Homosexuality,” in Beyond the Lavender Lexicon, William L., Leap, ed., (Amsterdam: Gordon Breach Publishers, 1995), pp. 133-53Google Scholar.

6. Michel, Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, New York: Pantheon, 1978 Google Scholar.

7. See Joseph M., Carrier and Stephen O., Murray, “Woman/Woman Marriage in Africa,” in African Homosexualities, Stephen O., Murray and William, Roscoe, (eds.), New York: New York University Press, forthcomingGoogle Scholar.

8. Mark, Gevisser and Edwin, Cameron, eds., Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Africa, New York and London: Routledge and Braamfontein, South Africa: Ravan Press, 1995 Google Scholar.

9. Moraga, , Cherrie, and Gloria, Anzaldua, eds. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, New York: Kitchen Table/Women of Color Press, 1984 Google Scholar.

10. Here and below, the term “queer” encapsulates the different categories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and simply alternative genders and sexualities.

11. A slightly different version of this paper will appear in the forthcoming volume on colonial photography in Namibia, The Colonizing Camera, Wolfram, Hartmann, Patricia, Hayes, and Jeremy, Silvester, eds., Capetown: Univ. of Capetown Press Google Scholar.

12. Forthcoming in African Homosexualities.

13. Forthcoming in Mapping Bodies, New York: Routledge. See also Glen, Elder, “Of Moffies, Kaffirs and Perverts: Male Homosexuality and the Discourse of Moral Order in the Apartheid State,” in Mapping Desire, David, Bell and Gill, Valentine, (eds.) New York: Routledge, 1995 Google Scholar.

14. See also Rudolph, Gaudio, “Unreal Women and the Men Who Love Them: Gay Gender Roles in Hausa Muslim Society,” Socialist Review, 95(2), 1995 Google Scholar; and Rudolph, Gaudio, “Men Who Talk Like Women: Language, Gender and Sexuality in Hausa Muslim Society,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, 1996 Google Scholar.

15. Matthew, Krause and Kim, Berman, eds., The Invisible Ghetto, Johannesburg: COSAW, 1993 Google Scholar.

16. Nordiska, Afrikainstituet, Current African Issues #19, June 1996 Google Scholar.

17. Deborah P., Amory, “African Studies as American Institution,” in Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science, Akhil, Gupta and James, Ferguson, eds., pp. 102-16, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997 Google Scholar.

18. Kath, Weston, “Lesbian/Gay Studies in the House of Anthropology,” Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 22, pp. 157-85Google Scholar. See also Pedro Bustos-, Aguilar, “Mister Don’t Touch the Banana: Notes on the Popularity of the Ethnosexed Body South of the Border,” Critique of Anthropology, 15(2), pp. 149-70, 1995 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19. Evelyn, Blackwood, “Cross-Cultural Lesbian Studies: Problems and Possibilities,” in The New Lesbian Studies, Bonnie, Zimmerman and Toni A.H.McNaron, , eds., pp. 194–202, New York: The Feminist Press Google Scholar. See also Deborah, Elliston, “Erotic Anthropology: ‘Ritualized Homosexuality’ in Melanesia and Beyond,” American Ethnologist, 22(4)Google Scholar.

20. See Deborah P. Amory, “Mashoga, Mabasha, Mage: ‘Homosexuality’ on the East African Coast,” forthcoming in African Homosexualities.

21. “Russian bid to ‘cure’ lesbian was persecution, court finds,” Boston Sunday Globe, June 29, 1997, p. A21.

22. See “Conference Reports” in Signs, 22(1), 1996, especially Ara, Wilson, “Lesbian Visibility and Sexual Rights at Beijing,” pp. 214-18Google Scholar.

23. Again, “queer” is a favored term because it captures the sense of a wide range of genders, sexualities, and oppositional identities that are emerging in various post-colonial contexts. For example, see Martin F., Manalansan IV, “(Re)locating the Gay Filipino: Resistance, Postcolonialism, and Identity,” in Critical Essays: Gay and Lesbian Writers of Color, Emmanuel S., Nelson, (ed.), (New York: Harrington Park Press), pp. 53–72 Google Scholar; Geeta Patel, “Home, Homo, Hybrid: Gender and Sexuality in South Asia,” forthcoming in College English; Took Took, Thongthiraj, “Toward a Struggle Against Invisibility: Love Between Women in Thailand,” Amerasia Journal, 20(1), pp. 45–58, 1994 Google Scholar.

24. John, Mburu, “Dreams and Delusions of an Incipient Gay and Lesbian Movement in Kenya,” forthcoming in Different Rainbows: Same-sex Sexualities and Popular Struggles in the Third World, London: Gay Men’s Press Google Scholar.

25. Katie, King, “Local and Global: AIDS Activism and Feminist Theory,” Camera Obscura, 28, pp. 79–98, 1992 Google Scholar.

26. For a discussion of the challenges of being an African feminist and academic, see Abena P. A. , Busia, “On Cultures of Communication: Reflections from Beijing,” Signs 22(1), pp. 204-10Google Scholar; on the hazards of being a professional queer ethnographer, see Kath Weston, “The Virtual Anthropologist,” in Anthropological Locations, pp. 163-84.

27. Thanks to John Mburu for this insight.