To achieve something by way of negation is not just to state a difference. It is to impose a certain kind of violence and domination on things so ordered around for the sake of epistemic, religious, or political expediency also. The notion of queerness presented in this book takes the view that the process of conceptualizing selves “out-of-order” is fundamentally anti-dialectical, negotiated, political and spiritual. Queerness negation manifested as a form of colonial and postcolonial epistemic and political violence defines reality as the clash of ideal and non-ideal categories. The demand to achieve something by way of negation that dialectics imposes on itself is costly because it treats negation as inevitable. From an anti-dialectical standpoint, analyses of the films Proteus and Karmen Geï deal with the processes of freeing queer selves from colonial and postcolonial negation. The book reflects on the conditions and possibilities of queerness affirmation as an ethics of presence grounded in the politics of negotiation following the proposition of nego-feminism and the practical humanism of Senghor to offer an ethical and embodied vision of an ecological depth of feeling and will as foundational to relational possibilities within the African(a) world.
How does one address homophobia without threatening majority rule democracy and freedoms of speech and faith? How does one "Africanize" sexuality research, empirically and theoretically, in an environment that is not necessarily welcoming to African scholars? In Sexual Diversity in Africa, contributors critically engage with current debates about sexuality and gender identity, as well as with contentious issues relating to methodology, epistemology, ethics, and pedagogy. They present a tapestry of issues that testify to the complex nature of sexuality, sexual practices, and gender performance in Africa. Essays examine topics such as the well-established same-sex networks in Accra and Bamako, African "traditions" defined by European observers, and the bizarre mix of faith, pharmaceuticals, and pseudo-science used to "cure" homosexual men. Their evidence also demonstrates the indefensibility of over-simplified constructions of homosexuality versus heterosexuality, modern versus traditional, Africa versus the West, and progress from the African closet towards Western models of out politics, all of which have tainted research on same-sex practices and scientific studies of HIV/AIDS. Asserting that the study of sexuality is intellectually and politically sustainable in Africa, Sexual Diversity in Africa contributes to the theorization of sexualities by presenting a more sensitive and knowledgeable study of African experiences and perspectives. Contributors include Olajide Akanji, Christophe Broqua, Cheryl Cooky, Serena Owusua Dankwa, Shari L. Dworkin, Marc Epprecht, Melissa Hackman, Notisha Massaquoi, Crystal Munthree, Kathleen O’Mara, Stella Nyanzi, S.N.Nyeck, Vasu Reddy, Amanda Lock Swarr, and Lisa Wiebesiek.
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