The Cultural Politics Of Female Sexuality In South Africa

Sexual identity has emerged into the national discourse of post-apartheid South Africa, bringing the subject of rights and the question of gender relations and cultural authenticity into the focus of the nation state’s politics. This book is a fascinating reflection on the effects of these discourses on non-normative modes of sexuality and intimacy and on the country more generally. While in 1996, South Africa became the first country in the world that explicitly incorporated lesbian and gay rights within a Bill of Rights, much of the country has continued to see homosexuality as un-African. Henriette Gunkel examines how colonialism and apartheid have historically shaped constructions of gender and sexuality and how these concepts have not only been re-introduced and shaped by understandings of homosexuality as un-African but also by the post-apartheid constitution and continued discourse within the nation.

Gender policies from Portuguese colonialism, through Frelimo socialism, to later neo-liberal economic regimes share certain basic assumptions about women, men and gender relations - but to what extent do such assumptions fit the ways in which rural Mozambican men and women see themselves?

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.

The Sexual History of the Global South explores the gap between sexuality studies and post-colonial cultural critique. Featuring twelve case studies, based on original historical and ethnographic research from countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the book examines the sexual investments underlying the colonial project and the construction of modern nation-states. Covering issues of heteronormativity, post-colonial amnesia regarding non-normative sexualities, women's sexual agency, the policing of the boundaries between the public and the private realm, sexual citizenship, the connections between LGBTQ activism and processes of state formation, and the emergence of sexuality studies in the global South, this collection is of great geographical, historical, and topical significance.

This book examines how same-sex sexualities are represented in several post-apartheid South African cultural texts, drawing on a rich local archive of same-sex sexualities that includes recent fiction, drama, film, photography, and popular print culture. While the book situates these texts within the specific context of post-apartheid South Africa, it also looks outwards towards transnational connectivity and cultural flows. The author uses the idea of restlessness to refer to the uneven flow of cultural tropes, political sentiment, ideas, ideologies, and representational modes across geographical boundaries, across time and space, and between genres, presenting sexual cultures as simultaneously rooted and transnational. He focuses on how notions of race and gender, in the shadow of colonialism and apartheid, play out in the present and shape how sexualities are represented. This interdisciplinary book offers a conceptual entry point to several areas of study, including transnationalism, literary and cultural studies, critical race theory, gender and sexuality studies, and African studies, and will be of interest to students and researchers across these fields. Its inclusion of a range of textual genres extends its reach into visual culture, film and media studies, history, and politics.

Textbook on gender.

The Politics of Gender and the Culture of Sexuality outlines theories of gender within the intellectual paradigm of the triple heritage: Islam, Africanity, and the West. This book describes the impact of individual contexts and politics on meanings attributed to the human body. The Politics of Gender and the Culture of Sexuality explores how men and women relate to each other in monogamous and polygamous marriage, race rivalries, slavery, miscegenation, cultures of procreation, family planning, and the Islamic view of women’s dignity vis-à-vis the Western view of women’s liberty. In doing so, the author and editor present a multifaceted and dynamic theoretical discourse of gender.

This book explores the textures of women’s narratives of patriarchal oppression of female sexuality. Postcolonial feminist scholars in Africa highlight the importance of moving beyond Westernised lenses of ‘African’ women’s powerlessness, towards a focus on women’s culturally-specific sexual agency. However, few studies explore women’s psychological experiences of sexual oppression/agency in real depth. Narrative Landscapes of Female Sexuality in Africa traces the narratives of heterosexual migrant women from Zimbabwe, Kenya and Congo. The book offers insight into women’s experiences ‘back home,’ travelling through border posts in Africa, and life in current post-apartheid South Africa. Through a unique collectively-based methodology and a feminist poststructuralist lens, the author examines narrative strategies used by the women to manage and psychologically resist harmful discourses surrounding female sexuality and women’s bodies. The book offers rich exploration of the intersections of gender and sexuality, class, race and citizenship situating the narratives within the wider context of poverty and migration in sub-Saharan Africa. These vectors of oppression are illuminated throughout the text via integrated threads of the researcher’s positionality in relation to the women narrators.