Magenya Sheena / Coalition of African Lesbians

Music as a tool of resistance in influencing popular culture away from hetero-conforming power structures in Kenya

This paper intends to investigate the role that popular culture, in the way of music, is playing in transforming and resisting (or not) ideas and perceptions of what African culture and tradition are in Kenya. Gender and sexuality continue to be policed in modern day Africa, but the structures of influential power have shifted and are not all ancient and old traditional power structures and gatekeepers who ensure that women and men conform to a unitary idea of sexuality and gender. At an age where patriarchs have been replaced by pop songs that police how women’s bodies should be dressed and undressed, how women should be loved and unloved, and how we should interact with bodies and personalities that do not conform to mainstream and accepted constructions of gender and sexuality-this kind of subversion is necessary resistance by lesbian women, seeking to become visible in this space, and how we should interact with bodies and personalities that do not conform to mainstream and accepted constructions of gender and sexuality. This paper would like to investigate at this point HOW popular culture reinforces and resists colonial ideas around the sexuality and gender of women, as well as queer and trans-identifying Kenyan women and men, and why we need a conversation about culture and tradition outside its age old understanding of pre-colonial practises and behaviour patterns. It’s re-invention if you may.

Gyamerah Akua / Columbia University

Gore Ellie / University of Birmingham

Saving the ‘‘African homosexual’’: Discourse and interventions on LGBT rights in Africa

The politicization of LGBT rights has been a key feature of international politics over the past five years. Within Western political and media discourses on LGBT rights, much attention has focused on Africa. Here, Africa is characterised as homophobic, a continent where same-sex sexualities face violence, oppression, and state-sponsored persecution, with frequent citations of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda and the same-sex marriage ban in Nigeria. Drawing on political statements, press releases and news media from the US, this paper will examine how this discourse works to construct Africa as exceptionally homophobic, the Other of ‘the West’ in its treatment of LGBT citizens. The paper argues that not only do these essentialist accounts reproduce colonialist tropes, they omit the complexities of queer sexual politics across the African continent. They also silence the voices of queer Africans themselves and the different forms of activism taking place around sexual rights. The paper further examines the figure of the ‘oppressed African homosexual’, a logical outcome of the narrative of African homophobia. It argues that this figure works to solidify idealised values in the US, constructing the American state as a paragon of ‘freedom’, ‘equality’, and ‘human rights’, and conferring legitimacy to an array of disciplinary projects and interventions.

Gouyon Marien /LAS, EHESS

Virtuel, émotions, sentiments, espace public: vers une matérialisation de la marginalité

Émotions et sentiments sont des objets peut-être « illégitimes » mais de fait omniprésents – en arrière-plan – lors d’une recherche qualitative. Sans prétendre résoudre ce problème, j’interroge le rôle assumé par les nouvelles technologies dans la socialisation des émotions qu’éprouve un sujet qui découvre sa propre sexualité. Après avoir montré comment ces technologies contribuent au développement d’un sentiment d’appartenance, j’aborderai la question de leurs effets sur la formalisation d’une émotion que de jeunes hommes qui se rencontrent désirent partager. En somme, ces réflexions visent la manière dont l’homosexualité fournit une sorte de matérialité à un espace virtuel marqué de marginalité. En retour, je cherche à comprendre comment, à Casablanca, cet espace débouche sur une nouvelle définition de l’espace public dans les constructions identitaires homosexuelles. C’est grâce à l’ethnographie d’une « clique » (autodénomination des premiers intéressés) existant dans cette ville que j’entends mettre en lumière la matérialité de la capacité d’agir d’individus « qui se racontent homosexuels ».

Pakade Nomancotsho

Alternative discourses to alcohol consumption amongst same-sex loving Black women in Soweto: Renegotiating issues of class, race and gender

Alcohol continues to feature in spaces of resistance and visibility such as Pride events, pageants, dates, stokvels (informal savings and credit clubs) and other celebratory spaces for same-sex practising and women who love women (WLW). Alcohol consumption within the same-sex practising community has been largely documented within the context of health focusing on substance abuse, at times, as a coping mechanism. However, there are a variety of experiences and expressions that we can attribute to the chosen kind of alcohol by same-sex practising and WLW, and how these choices are a reflection of their gender expression, their sexual orientation as well as their class identities and associations. This paper will explore alcohol consumption as a gendered expression of a sexual identity amongst Black WLW within capitalism in its brands and consumption market. Despite the two decade long democracy, social spaces like lesbian friendly clubs are limited in South Africa, partly due to the historical dominant visibility of men; white, professional middle class and urbanised. The data will be sourced from a 2014 MA thesis focusing on 50 Black WLW from Soweto who filled in, amongst other demographic categories, a list of alcohol brands that each woman preferred. Two groups emerged strongly. This paper seeks to complicate the notion of class in relation to preference and status on alcohol consumption but through the performance of gender and the script of the masculine-feminine.

Malinda Ato / Leiden University

Queer Identification in Nairobi as a Globalized Endeavour

The paper I will present will be the beginning of my PhD research entitled ‘Queer Identification in Nairobi as a Globalized Endeavour.’ It investigates the role of western media in the everyday performances of daily activities and sexualities by queer Kenyans. I will be looking at the effect of international media, specifically reality television. The fields of art practice that I will be referring to are performance and digital video. I am interested in modes of performance that obstruct the senses. In these vibrant times we live in, information through different media outlets is almost too readily available to the point of sensationalism and inundation. The ubiquity of reality T.V is one such example. Reality T.V blurs the lines between reality and fiction and becomes performative. The queer art practitioners of whose work I will refer are Rotimi Fani-Kayode; in his short life he made seminal work in contribution to a queer African narrative. In addition the archives of Azalea: A Magazine by Third World Lesbians, published between 1977 and 1983 will no doubt prove both intriguing and helpful. This magazine in particular because of its political and geographical make-up; created in New York with (influential) encouragement of contributions from Africa and Asia. I will also look at the work of Del Lagrace Volcano, Catherine Opie, Zanele Muholi, Kehinde Wiley, and Mickalene Thomas.