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- Convenors:
-
Signe Arnfred
(Roskilde University)
Christian Groes-Green (Roskilde University)
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- Location:
- C4.06
- Start time:
- 29 June, 2013 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 3
Short Abstract:
Until fairly recently research on sexuality in Africa has focused on sexuality as a field of violence, risk and danger. In these approaches to sexuality concerns with eroticism, desire and pleasure have been conspicuously missing. The panel aims to contribute to filling this gap.
Long Abstract:
Until fairly recently research on sexuality in Africa has focused on sexuality as a field of violence, risk and danger. Development discourse has been engaged with themes such as FGM, HIV/AIDS and gendered violence - in addition to continued concerns with sex as connected to reproduction, family planning and sexual health. In these approaches to sexuality concerns with eroticism, desire and pleasure have been conspicuously missing. Furthermore, homosexual, bisexual and queer sexualities have been seen as un-African or even non-existent.
Over the last few years, however, this scene has been changing. Empirical studies now focus on themes such as intergenerational and transnational economies of sex, on new and old spaces for female pleasure, power and eroticism, on male intimacies and bisexual desires. Broad questions are raised regarding possible differences between sexualities in Africa as compared to sexualities in 'the West'. Does it make sense, after all, to talk of 'African sexualities'? And if so, with which arguments, on which empirical basis? Indeed, the Western emphasis on sexual identities may have less relevance in some African contexts - but how to move studies of sexuality in Africa beyond legacies of Western categorizations?
Perhaps it is time to rethink conventional categories for studies of sexuality and gender in Africa, perhaps the whole field should be rethought, making space for local categorizations of desire, eroticism and pleasure. Evoking such discussions the panel aims to contribute to a continuing development of postcolonial feminist approaches to gender, sexuality and pleasure - in Africa and beyond.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Kopano Ratele (University of South Africa)
Paper short abstract:
The paper re-examines the idea of tradition in the gender and sexual lives of African men, as well as the possibility of reconciling the prevalent narrative of African sexual/gender tradition with ‘non-traditional’ gender/sexual desires.
Paper long abstract:
Animated by ideas on both decoloniality of knowledge and postcoloniality, in this paper I re-examine the idea of tradition in the lives of African men and try to imagine a possibility of reintroducing 'non-traditional' desires into the prevalent discourse African tradition, where 'non-traditional' desires means nonconforming desires, practices, identities, relationships, and bodies. The question underpinning the paper is, how do some desires become part of, while others are expelled from, tradition? The paper traces when and for what purpose do people take recourse in tradition, as well as how some scholars of gender and sexuality, in situating nonconforming desires, practices, identities, relationships, and bodies outside of that which is considered traditionally African, have worsened the difficulties for progressive scholars and activists working on gender and sexuality in Africa - that is, within a space where the discourse of tradition is used positively in attempts to challenge the effects of colonialist economic and cultural globalization. Decolonialising, transformative studies of gender and sexuality, it is argued, need to renegotiate the opposition of 'tradition' and 'non-traditional desires' if they are going to unsettle views of the former that clash with claims for the recognition of sexual equality and right to pleasure in post-colonial Africa, and undo views of the latter that implicitly or overtly construct African desires as exceptional. In conclusion the paper offers some ways of thinking through colonialist and traditionalist configurations of gender and sexuality that continue to inhibit much of African men's desiring practices.
Osmundo Pinho (UFRB)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper we will discuss some records, fragments of a documentation, found at the Mozambique’s Historical Archive collection “Direção de Serviços de Negócios Indigenas”, related to the turbulent process of elaboration of the Mozambique’s Native (indigenas) Civil and Penal Code.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper we will discuss some records, fragments of a documentation, found at the Mozambique's Historical Archive collection "Direção de Serviços de Negócios Indigenas", related to the turbulent process of elaboration of the Mozambique's Native (indigenas) Civil and Penal Code, task commissioned to the jurist/ethnologist José Gonçalves Cota, by the General Governor of the Colony of Mozambique, José Bettencourt. The documentation in question allows us to vividly capture the effective process of native inscription as described by G. Spivak, under the framework of "legibility" as discussed in other way by Veena Das. From this perspective we are able to discuss the political transit of women's fate incorporation, and of their body. This incorporation made by the State allows us to see the gender political economy articulation in the colonial environment. Such incomplete transition/translation works as an postcolony element, as described by Achille Mbembe, that survives to the Mozambique's political emancipation, and go further, modified, in the frelimist discourse, as we intend to demonstrate.
Elina Oinas (University of Helsinki)
Paper short abstract:
The paper discusses the conceptualizations of the social embeddedness of the subject in two recent collections, Silvia Tamale’s African Sexualities (2011) and Oyeronke Oyewumi’s Gender Epistemologies in Africa (2011).
Paper long abstract:
This paper wishes to discuss interlinkages and differences between ways of theorizing "the subject" and relationality in feminist and queer theory in different settings. I will contrast Judith Butler's performative queer sexualities with feminist discussions on sexualities and subjecthood in Africa as expressed in two recent collections, Silvia Tamale's African Sexualities (2011) and Oyeronke Oyewumi's Gender Epistemologies in Africa (2011). In this paper I am specifically interested in the ways power, relationality, the social embeddedness of the subject, and the fragility of human life and individuality are discussed. These conceptualizations will be further discussed as ideas that can bring together, rather than separate the different contexts of analyzing sexuality. Further, I am concerned with the way an oppositional discourse inherent in feminist scholarship may re-generate a myth of the heroic male Subject as an analytical concept in a way that is unhelpful in the field of sexuality studies.
Lia Viola (University of Torino)
Paper short abstract:
Since Nineties Kenyan north coast has been particularly shaken by homophobic violence. It seems that this homophobia is a consequence of historical and cultural changes on the field of sexuality. Sexual identity and erotic desire are keys concepts to understand was has gone on.
Paper long abstract:
The aim of my paper is to inquire about the representation and the historical mutation of the homosexual desire in Kenyan north coast. In particular I'll analyze how homophobia is a direct consequence of historical and cultural changes on the fields of sexual desire, sexuality and gender identity.
My reflexions came up from my one year field work in Malindi a touristic small town in the Kenyan north Coast. Two hours driving from Mombasa, Malindi is a cosmopolitan small town well connected with the Swahili-Muslim environment.
Here homophobia started to be a problem since early Nineties. Before those years homosexuality was, in some ways and environment, tolerated and well spread.
My idea is that homophobia is the result of some historical events that have brought to a cultural shift on the meaning of some key concepts.
Above all the exportation in Africa of the Western sexual categories has had a tremendous impact on the local population. In fact in Swahili traditional style of life same-sex relationships were well spread and considered as perfectly compatible with an heterosexual life based on Muslim prescriptions.
The Western idea that sexual behavior defines a certain sexual identity has been, among others, a crucial factor on the start of homophobic hate. Sexual tourism and international changing on the Muslim world have been also important factors on the growth of homophobic hate.
It's seems that homophobia in the Swahili world could be a consequence of the exportation of the Western interpretation of sexuality and erotic desire.
Anke van der Kwaak (Royal Tropical Institute)
Paper short abstract:
This paper deconstructs the divergence between the social and sexual lives of young people living with HIV and dominant development discourses in a low income area in Kenya.
Paper long abstract:
In 2010 the desires and dreams were studied of young people between 15-19 years of age living with HIV in Kibera, Nairobi. Subsequently, a bridging and bonding workshop was organized to discuss the findings with some of them. They turned out to have similar dreams as young people elsewhere, actively longing for space, social life and (sexual) pleasure and had very specific ideas about their parenting roles. In 2012 a mapping was done to document services and support networks for the same young people. Fragmentation, paternalistic approaches and a intense focus on life-skills and theater seem to be products of a discourse seeing these young people as vulnerable only on account of their risky performance, HIV positive status and being poor: They are de-sexualized and de-pleasurised.
In this paper texts of young females and males on the one hand and the programmers on the other hand will be analysed, synthesised and discussed. In a world where the young people are gendered sexual beings confronted with many limitations and the fulfillment of their dreams it seems that new concepts and categories are needed to support or work with them, and by doing this transcending ideas of meaningful participation, risk, and ownership. All these have become hollow vessels as they are one-dimensional static concepts that are neither western nor African. The paper will attempt to come up with some new categories based on gender analyses and will pose questions on alternative methodologies of research and inguiry.
Rachel Spronk (University of Amsterdam)
Paper short abstract:
The dominant focus on social problems and injustice in research on gender and sexuality has resulted in an epistemological loop where pleasure has become excluded. My proposition is that pleasure and pain are not mutually exclusive and that a focus on pleasure will cover both favourable and harmful aspects.
Paper long abstract:
The dominant focus on social problems and injustice in research on gender and sexuality has resulted in an epistemological loop where pleasure has become excluded, and where problems have dominated our way of understanding social life in African societies. It has resulted in a limited understanding of people's behaviours, experiences and motivations. Recent efforts by activists, self-help groups, and many more, as well as recent studies, to put pleasure on the agenda illustrates dissatisfaction with a paradigm grounded in problems, more specifically, with the hegemonic trend of simplifying sex in Africa, de-erotising it to an act devoid of meaning. There is a need for a more comprehensive conceptualization of sexuality that does not deny the problems of sexuality, but neither does not exclude the erotic pleasures of sex. Sex is a vehicle for the expression and pursuit of different needs and feelings that are acted upon in relation to contextual factors such as social inequality, cultural expectations and political constraints. I propose that pleasure and pain in sexuality often go hand on hand. Rather than seeing them as binary oppositions, I argue that we can benefit from a concept of sexuality grounded in pleasure and how it is bound to pain in different degrees. Focusing on people's lives in Kenya and Ghana, I will show how there is a thin line between pleasure and anxiety, between desire and hurt, between gratification and discomfort, and that these are not unconnected or mutually exclusive emotions and experiences.
Serena Owusua Dankwa (Universität Basel)
Paper short abstract:
Considering the erotic a powerful human resource (Lorde 1984), this paper engages the critical agency of same-sex loving women in postcolonial Ghana who claim knowledge and erotic "enjoyment," while using kinship terms to relate to each other, thereby forging new forms of relatedness.
Paper long abstract:
In recent years southern Ghana has seen an emergence of subcultures that organize around notions of gay modernity. With the HIV/AIDS pandemic playing a major role in carving out new identities, and paralleled by an increase in anti-gay rhetorics, these sites reflect the needs of men, but have only attracted few women who love women. Drawing on my own ethnographic data, the proposed paper explores the ways in which working-class women in postcolonial Ghana inhabit and conceptualize same-sex passions beyond the language of lesbian identity.
Especially women who understand the girlfriendships they engaged in during puberty as an integral part of their (sexual) coming of age, depict their adult preference for female lovers as an ongoing choice and claim the significance of intimate pleasure. This sense of choosing pleasure belies any neat categorical distinction between "practice" and "identity." Rather, their emphasis on sensual knowledge and "enjoyment" suggests a belonging to themselves that echoes Audre Lorde's vision of the "erotic as power," that thrives on "the joys, which we know ourselves capable of" (1984). Lorde's holistic understanding of knowledge and "erotic subjectivity" (Allen 2011) is powerful not least in its capacity to bridge the analytical gap between gender and sexuality. Engaging same-sex eroticism as powerful human resource, this paper seeks to grasp the everyday practices and the critical agency of "knowing women" who use kinship terms to relate to each other, thereby forging new forms of relatedness.
Brigitte Bagnol (Faculty of Veterinary Science and Charles Perkins Centre, The University of Sydney, Australia. The University of the Wtwatersrand, SA. )
Paper short abstract:
Initiation rites have been described as the step to adulthood, the ultimate loss of a child's innocence, the acquisition of gender, sexual and linguistic/ethnic identities. The paper shows that girls are empowered by their knowledge on sexuality.
Paper long abstract:
In Northern Mozambique most of the girls and boys are initiated when they are between 6 and 14 years of age and in the last few decade the age of initiation has been decreasing mainly due to the influence of Islam. The paper brings evidence on the role of female initiation rituals in the construction of girls' sexuality.
A total of 19 individual interviews and 26 focus groups discussion were carried out in December 2009 and 2010 in the provinces of Cabo Delgado and Niassa with men and women of different age groups to grasp the evolution of the practices. Participation in several phases of three initiation rituals allowed registering the messages transmitted.
Although female initiation rituals present variations according to the region, the linguistic group and the religious orientation, young initiated are prepared to engage in sexual intercourse after the rituals. They are familiarized with penetration, movements during coitus, cleaning of the penis and the vagina after sexual intercourse, massaging of their partner, avoiding sexual contact during menstruation and caring of menstrual fluids. They are also recommended to always accept having sexual intercourse at their partner' request. Girls are portrayed as the one provoking men who cannot resist. In exchange of their sexual favour they are taught that they should receive money in cash or in kind.
While significant transformations are registered including the decrease in the duration of initiation, the rituals represent a fundamental element in the construction of female sexual identity defining the onset of sexual debut.
Ifeyinwa Okolo (Federal University Lokoja)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores eroticism and pleasure in Diane Case’s Toasted Penis and Cheese to show the wide variety of sexual pleasures available to both men and women, but with emphasis on the pleasure available to the woman and how this engenders her overall wellbeing.
Paper long abstract:
Examining eroticism and pleasure from the angle of the woman, or even from any angle, is an emerging trend in African literature. Earlier works view eroticism from what the man does, his pleasure which are met, half met or denied, with the woman being passive. Emphasis is laid on the man as sexually active and the harvester of sexual pleasures while the woman is sexually dormant and the provider of pleasures for the man. From this angle, the woman is marginalized in discussions on sexual pleasures. This paper explores eroticism and pleasure in Diane Case's Toasted Penis and Cheese to show the wide variety of sexual pleasures available to both men and women, but with emphasis on the avenues of pleasure available to the woman. Sexual pleasures in the text are presented in binary forms with the socio-cultural and religious factors determining what are classified in these binaries as good/bad, moral/immoral, acceptable/unacceptable, and healthy/unhealthy. By externalising the protagonist's internal conflict through her conversation with imaginary angels, Case effectively represents different understandings and ideologies over varied sexual behaviours and pleasure. She however does not subscribe to the inhibitions generated by these ideologies but places the pleasures of the consenting adult(s) over them. The degree of sexual satisfaction or its denial contributes significantly to the general wellbeing of the individual, and to an extent determines the pace of human inter-relations.
Key words: eroticism, sexual pleasure, sexual satisfaction/denial, morality
Sandra Manuel (Universidade Eduardo Mondlane & Kaleidoscopio Research Institute)
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores sexual and intimate relationships in urban Maputo and its role in the definition of one´s sense of self. It discusses how agency, marriage and love mediate the process.
Paper long abstract:
Through the analysis of urban wealthy young adults´ sexual and intimate lives, this paper explores the complexities of their social affirmation in Maputo. How young adults use sexuality to give a sense of self and personhood in a context marked by rapid transformations occurring in the country intertwined with the legacy of colonialism, socialism, civil war and liberalization of the economy is a significant question. Tactical agency emerges as a critical concept to explain the ways in which both men and women manoeuvre to reach emotional stability and social recognition. In the process, marriage is the key means to socially recognized adulthood however; the process towards it is perilous as it involves a constant negotiation of expectations. Finally, love emerges as a space of catharsis in which individuals feel at ease and distant from social pressures and the desire to ´fit in´. Paradoxically it is a space of stress, it is perceived as a source of profound unhappiness when things go wrong.
Bodil Folke Frederiksen (Roskilde University)
Paper short abstract:
In post-independence Kenya popular media played a significant role in creating imaginaries of class, family and nation. The paper discusses ads directed at middle class urban women, invoking ideals of health, cleanliness, beauty and eroticism.
Paper long abstract:
In the post-independence period of accelerated social transformation in Kenya, popular media played a significant role in constructing imaginaries of class, family and nation. Magazines like Joe, True Love and Family represent a strong, normative drive towards new forms of social organization, built on gender equality and entitlesment to citizenship, welfare and consumption. The ads used the language and iconography of affect to awaken in the implied reader, mainly women, sensations of intimacy, care, love, eroticism and beauty. In their drive to turn desires held by women into consumption, the ads constructed coherent social imaginaries of gender relations, promoting nuclear families, health, hygiene and fashion. Ads directed at individual and household consumption were predominant and provided the attractive aesthetics of a glossy and colourful world; however other ads, less prominent, reflected the larger enabling and constraining world of economic realities: banking, insurance, loans and hire purchase. The paper illuminates the gendered discourses and iconography of advertisements. It discusses the role of the 'modern African woman' as the advertisements' implied reader, and the role of the ads for the social imaginaries of women in Kenya. Was consumption as represented in popular magazines, a significant identity marker for aspirational middle class women in Kenya in the period?
Thomas Fouquet (CNRS)
Paper short abstract:
Thinking beyond the dominant categories, this paper discusses the “politics of desire” and “politics of the value” brought by young Senegalese women engaged in different transactions involving sex and money, under the angle of “femininities de contestation” in the global age.
Paper long abstract:
This paper builds upon the ethnography I have conducted since 2002 within young Dakar women: "Night girls" according to dominant social stigma, "Night adventuress" [aventurières noctambules] as I prefer to call them. These young women engage the bars and nightclubs of Dakar through various types of transactions articulating money and sex, often in search of foreign partners. However, I consider these configurations less as means to cope with "basic needs" (the "survival sex") than in the prospect of the desires and specific lifestyles they contain and express: especially, longings for dépaysement through the participation in the "good life" and in the World Society. The Dakar by night is one of the most favored scene of expression for the "desires of Elsewhere" that are so widely shared throughout Senegalese youth. How needs and desires are embedded in the production of original "arts of existence" which are both ways of being-in-the-city and ways of being-in-the-world? In this perspective, I will discuss the dominant categories (mainly prostitution and transactional sex), showing that they remain unsatisfactory for interpreting social practices that are characterized by their lability. Finally, I will argue that they reveal the constitution of "femininities de contestation" in the global age.
Christel Antonites (University of Cape Town) Tiffany Mugo
Paper short abstract:
This paper looks at how HOLAAfrica! a pan-Africanist Queer Womanist Collective, is using Web 2.0 technologies to challenge oppressive gender and sexuality norms by sharing stories that reflect the diversity and heterogeneity of queer African experiences.
Paper long abstract:
Amina Mama argues that once the diversity and heterogeneity of African history, society and culture is recognized theoretically, researchers have the ability to dispel myths about "essential" African culture. This paper would like to contribute to this project by focusing on the ways in which young queer African women are making use of Web 2.0 technologies to engage in issues related to gender and sexuality to challenge myths and negative perceptions about the lives of sexual minorities in African contexts. The example of one organization HOLAAfrica!, which describes itself as a Pan-Africanist Queer Womanist Collective, is used to show that that even though young African women are often faced with severe homophobic and heterosexist realities, a growing number of women are embracing social networking tools to challenge oppressive gender and sexuality norms and to build community. HOLAAfrica! provides an online platform for African women to share their stories and thus co-create knowledge that reflects diversity and the heterogeneity of queer African experiences. Writing and talking about experiences that counter oppressive norms enough can begin to shape new kinds of norms. The space that is created by using multiple Web 2.0 technologies allow for communicative identity constructions that are assisting women to challenge understandings in their contexts that see sexual identity as something that is fixed, natural, exclusively heterosexual, and not to be disturbed.
Nadine Beckmann (University of Roehampton)
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyses how young people in Zanzibar negotiate tensions between traditional values, modernist processes and Islamic reformism in their quest for simultaneously respectable and fulfilling sexual and romantic relationships.
Paper long abstract:
This paper analyses how young Zanzibaris negotiate tensions between traditional values, modernist processes and Islamic reformism in their quest for simultaneously respectable and fulfilling sexual and romantic relationships. While sexual pleasure for men and women is emphasized and expressed in extensive sexual education sessions, transformations of courting, sex and marriage expectations are at the centre of a tense debate about the decline of Islamic morality in the islands. Yet, rather than signalling a radical shift from arranged marriage based on pragmatic-practical considerations to what Giddens (1992) called 'pure' relationships based on love, these transformations show considerable continuities with the values on which previous marital relationships were built, including notions of respectability grounded in the concepts of haya (shyness, modesty) and heshima (honour, respect), but also pragmatic considerations (e.g. economic status, fertility), mutual compatibility, and romantic and sexual desires. The more significant shift, it seems, lies in an increasing demand for more individualised forms of decision-making, and a reconfiguration of expectations connected to intimacy and companionship.
I trace these developments through case studies of two Zanzibari women's quests for 'love' and sexual satisfaction: one middle-class girl of Yemeni origin who persuades her family to let her marry someone they consider unsuitable, and one HIV-positive divorcee who finds love outside of marriage, but finally succumbs to societal pressures. Focusing on sexual practice, I analyse how people forge new forms of intimacy by selectively drawing on local interpretations of Islam, essentialist discourses brought forward by Islamic reformists, and Western health and social interventions.