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queer & trans Art-iculations: Decolonising gender and sexualities in the global South
... Established English terms such as 'lesbian', 'gay', 'bisexual', 'transgender', 'intersex' and 'queer' -as well as various associated acronyms -have proliferated. Researchers and activists have, however, raised concerns about the relevance and impact of deploying these terms in southern contexts (McEwen and Milani, 2014;Msibi, 2014). Referring to knowledge production on African sexualities, Tamale (2011: 18) states 'the fact that the language of Western colonialists has dominated sexuality discourses means that the shape and construction of the meanings and definitions of related concepts necessarily reflect realities and experiences outside Africa'. ...
... Considering the limited South African scholarly base analysing language use in relation to sexual and gender diversity (see McEwen and Milani, 2014;Msibi, 2013;Msibi and Rudwick, 2015), we cast our net wide to identify texts for analysis. We used, as a starting point, our own knowledge of academic literature, 'grey' literature produced by LGBTI South African civil society, as well as our awareness of media outputs, such as newsprint, related to LGBTI issues. ...
The linguistic coding of sexual and gender diversity remains highly contested in African contexts. While English language terminologies reflecting rights-based talk proliferate, such terms fail to fully reflect the lived realities of African queerness. This paper engages existing South African research on indigenous terminologies to describe sexual and gender diversity, focusing on representations of male same-sex sexualities. Our findings show that local terminologies serve not only to ‘other’ sexual and gender diversity, but also hold the potential to render those existing outside of normative sex/gender binaries as socially intelligible. Two core themes emerged: (i) the persistence of heterogendered subjectivities, where sexual dissidence is mapped onto a normative male/female binary; and (ii) a procreative imperative focused on communitarian norms that privilege heterosexual childbearing. The findings highlight the limitations of global terminologies of sexual and gender diversity by engaging the ways in which local African terminologies provide social recognition for same-sex sexualities in generally heteronormative community spaces. We discuss the implications of this gendered encoding of sexual dissidence in terms of advocacy strategies for the greater social inclusion of sexual and gender minorities.
... about feminism in Africa, has led African queer scholars and thinkers, such as Keguro Macharia (2016), to launch a "A Litany of Complaint" which critiques how their quest for queer knowledge, (self-)understanding and existence is denied or systematically pigeonholed. However, as part of the "global trajectories of queerness" (Tellis and Bala 2015), and of the ongoing decolonization of queer studies (Hawley & Altman 2001;McEwen and Milani 2014), many African sexual and gender diversity activists, artists, and scholars have embraced "queer" as a political and theoretical term to name their struggles, especially in Anglophone contexts. 1 Sokari Ekine and Hakima Abbas, as editors of the Queer African Reader, acknowledge the limitations of queer in relation to African neo-colonial realities, yet they adopt the term to denote a radical political and epistemological frame: "We use queer to underscore a perspective that embraces gender and sexual plurality and seeks to transform, overhaul and revolutionise African order rather than seek to assimilate into oppressive hetero-patriarchal-capitalist frameworks" (Ekine and Abbas 2013, 3) Thus, although these scholars appear to struggle somewhat with the western genealogy of queer terminology, they nevertheless adopt it for a radical project of thinking through, and working towards, sexual and gender diversity in Africa. ...
“Queer” is a relatively recent and somewhat controversial term in African studies. Yet it is proving to be productive, not only for understanding African subjectivities of sexuality and gender, but also Africa’s position in the larger economy of knowledge. This essay explores the productive tensions between “queer” and “Africa,” and aims to read Africa as queer and to read queer from Africa. Thus, rather than imagining Africa and queer as polar opposites, the essay harnesses the critical, productive, and creative affinities between these two terms that are vital for the project of decolonizing and queering queer Africa.
... Furthermore, the term "queer" is employed in the paper and requires some interrogation. As McEwen and Milani (2014) point out, there is ongoing debate about the usefulness of the term queer, which emerged in western contexts, for pan-African realities. The term is helpful in maintaining the distinction between practices and identities. ...
The school system in South Africa has only in recent years begun to more deeply grapple with issues of power and privilege along a number of axes of oppression including race, gender, class and recently, sexual and gender diversity. As a result, learners who embody sexual and gender diversity experiences spaces of belonging and exclusion in school settings. As a result, this paper asks: What needs to be done in the school system to reconstruct the “African child” to include sexual and gender diversity? Possibilities include inclusive policy implementation; inclusive learning and teaching resource materials; teacher preparedness to teach about and affirm sexual and gender diversity in the classroom and a clear rejection of homophobic and transphobic violence. The lessons learnt through the process of challenging racism in the school system – such as around essentialising, othering and systemic violence – have yet to be fully applied to sexual and gender diversity in schools.
... Heteronormativity supposes that "straight" men and women are innately attracted to each other emotionally. These suppositions involve a convoluted set of rules, structures, institutions, relations (McEwen and Milani, 2015) and practices that naturalise and universalise heterosexuality as a self-evident, appropriate and essential norm in culture, society, politics and organisations (Warner, 1991;Fausto-Sterling, 2000;Chambers, 2009 p. 35). Heteronormative assumptions also enable "straight minds" to develop a "totalizing interpretation of history, social reality, culture and other subjective phenomenon that weave an interlocking network of the symbolic order through language" (Wittig, 1980). ...
The purpose of this paper is to critically analyse the discourses of gender empowerment
in South African organisations to determine the extent to which they reify or resist the entrenched oppressive
gender binaries.
Design/methodology/approach – Multiple case studies design and critical discourse analysis were
employed to collect and analyse the data. Research entailed critical analysis of 36 published documents
containing information on gender and gender empowerment. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted
with six transformation managers as change agents who are tasked with the responsibility of driving gender
empowerment in the selected organisations.
Findings – The authors found that gender in studied organisations was insularly defined within the confines
of the male–female gender binaries. Consequently, designed gender empowerment strategies and ensuing
initiatives mainly focussed on promoting the inclusion of heterosexual women in and on protecting these
women from heterosexual men. Thus, gender empowerment systematised heteropatriachy in organisational
culture and processes while invisibilising and annihilating the possibility of existence of alternative genders
outside these naturalised binaries. Transformation managers, as change agents, fell short of acknowledging,
challenging and changing these entrenched ideologies of patriotic heterosexuality.
Research limitations/implications – The paper uses Galting’s (1960) and Paul Farmer’s (2009) concept
of structural violence and Rich’s (1980) notion of “deadly elasticity of heterosexual assumptions”, to theorise
these gender empowerment discourses as constituting and perpetuating violence against queer bodies
and subjectivities.
Practical implications – The paper recommends that corporates need to broaden their conceptions of
gender and to design and entrench gender discourses that promote gender justice and equality.
Social implications – This inquiry proves Joan Acker’s (2006) and Baker’s (2012) views that inequality and
injustice are produced and entrenched in a reciprocal relationship between society and the workplace.
Originality/value – This paper focusses on constructions of gender in organisations. By doing so, it links
the observed violence against women and gender binary non-conforming people in society with
organisational discourses of gender that perpetuate such violence instead of challenging and changing it so
that democracy can be realised for all.
Keywords Organizations, Diversity, Heteronormativity, Gender empowerment, Heteropatriachy
... While the first two contributions to this special issue focus on the intersections of gender and heterosexuality, the following articles zoom in on homosexuality with the help of a variety of "queer" linguistic approaches to textual analysis. All the authors here, however, do not unanimously agree on the applicability of "queer" to South African conditions (see also McEwen and Milani (2014) for a discussion). ...
This special issue on the theme of language, gender and sexuality in South Africa does not emerge in an academic vacuum. It is the continuation of a long-standing academic dialogue which has played out, inter alia, in two issues of the journal Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies dedicated to "gender and language" (de Kadt 2002), and "language and gender" (Reddy and de Kadt 2006), respectively1, as well as in a recent edited collection entitled Gender and Language in Sub-Saharan Africa: Tradition, Struggle and Change (Atanga, Ellece, Litosseliti and Sunderland 2013). In contrast, this special issue seeks explicitly to foreground sexuality as a category of investigation in its own right alongside gender. Of course, this is not to say that previous scholarship has ignored sexuality - quite the contrary (see e.g. Reddy (2002) onhomophobia in Southern Africa, and Reddy and Potgieter (2006) on the Zuma rape trial). Yet it is striking how analyses of language and sexuality have generally been framed under the umbrella titles of "language and gender"/"gender and language".
South Africa’s constitutional imperatives of social inclusion, social justice, respect for diversity and the transformation of society are reflected in broad education policy. This includes the mainstreaming of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) issues in education policy and frameworks. However despite formal provision for LGBTI inclusion, the purpose of this chapter, which is theoretically grounded in the tradition of social justice education, is to present varied perspectives showing that much needs to be done for LGBTI-inclusive policy to be translated into school-based practice. Methodologically, the chapter uses a desktop study and document analysis to elucidate tensions between the aspirations of the post-apartheid legislative and policy space, pervasive discrimination in schools and increased levels of agency among LGBTI young people. Despite homophobia, transphobia and backlash against Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE), the perspectives presented in this chapter foreground the increasing levels of visibility, protest and agency among LGBTI young people in schools. This chapter concludes by building on the existing work in social justice education and CSE in South Africa and by recommending ways to ensure the presence and visibility of LGBTI learners in South African schools.
The discourse-historical approach (DHA) belongs in the broadly defined field of critical
discourse studies (CDS), or also critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Reisigl&Wodak,
2001, 2009; Wodak, 2011, 2013). CDS in general investigates language use beyond the
sentence level, as well as other forms of meaning-making such as visuals and sounds,
seeing them as irreducible elements in the (re)production of society via semiosis. CDS
aims to denaturalize the role discourses play in the (re)production of noninclusive and
nonegalitarian structures and challenges the social conditions inwhich they are embedded.
Treated in this way, discourses stand in a mutual relationship with other semiotic
structures and material institutions: They shape them and are shaped by them.
This accessible book looks at how we talk about sex and why we talk about it the way we do. Drawing on examples that range from personal ads to phone sex, sado-masochistic scenes to sexual assault trials, this work provides a clear introduction to the relationship between language and sexuality. Using a broad definition of “sexuality”, it encompasses not only issues surrounding sexual orientation and identity, but also questions about the discursive construction of sexuality and the verbal expression of erotic desire.
This article provides an overview of the young discipline of Queer Linguistics and discusses how it may be fruitfully applied in sociolinguistics as a contribution to critical heteronormativity research. After locating Queer Linguistics historically as a reaction to earlier essentialist approaches in the field of language and sexuality, its theoretical underpinnings are outlined. Queer Linguistics is not to be equalled with a "gay and lesbian" approach to language. It rather transfers ideas from Queer Theory to linguistic research, building on the integration of work by poststructuralist scholars such as Foucault, Butler and Derrida in order to provide a critical investigation of the discursive formation of heteronormativity. Three potential criticisms against Queer Linguistics as a poststructuralist approach are addressed: its supposedly low relevance, issues of political agency, and its alleged lack of empirical applicability. Finally, methodological suggestions are made as to how sociolinguists may proceed from a Queer Linguistic point of view, focusing on ethnographically oriented studies of local identity negotiation, critical approaches to Discourse Analysis and Contrastive Sociolinguistics.
The 'public sphere' is one of the key concepts of the social theory produced in the global North. But does the global South need this concept? Its theoretical and cultural presuppositions are entirely European. They are not necessarily universally valid, even when they purport to be general theories. If the epistemological diversity of the world is to be accounted for, other theories must be developed and anchored in other epistemologies – the epistemologies of the South that adequately account for the realities of the global South. This paper is a meta-theoretical critique of the concept of the public sphere from the standpoint of the need for this epistemological diversity. It emphasises the need for intercultural translation, understood as a procedure that allows for mutual intelligibility among the diverse experiences of the world. Such a procedure does not endow any set of experiences with the statute either of exclusive totality or homogenous part. In the African context, this work of translation involves two moments. First, a deconstructive challenge which consists in identifying the Eurocentric remains inherited from colonialism. Secondly, a reconstructive challenge which consists in revitalising the historical and cultural possibilities of the African legacy, interrupted by colonialism and neocolonialism. In this twofold movement of social experiences relations of mutual intelligibility emerge which must not result in the cannibalisation of some by others.
From Chapter 1: Empire and the creation of a social science Origin stories Open any introductory sociology textbook and you will probably find, in the first few pages, a discussion of founding fathers focused on Marx, Durkheim and Weber. The first chapter may also cite Comte, Spencer, Tönnies and Simmel, and perhaps a few others. In the view normally presented to students, these men created sociology in response to dramatic changes in European society: the Industrial Revolution, class conflict, secularisation, alienation and the modern state. This curriculum is backed by histories such as Alan Swingewood's (2000) Short History of Sociological Thought. This well-regarded British text presents a two-part narrative of 'Foundations: Classical Sociology' (centring on Durkheim, Weber and Marx), and 'Modern Sociology', tied together by the belief that 'Marx, Weber and Durkheim have remained at the core of modern sociology' (2000: x). Sociologists take this account of their origins seriously. Twenty years ago, a star-studded review of Social Theory Today began with a ringing declaration of 'the centrality of the classics' (Alexander 1987). In the new century, commentary on classical texts remains a significant genre of theoretical writing (Baehr 2002). The idea of classical theory embodies a canon, in the sense of literary theory: a privileged set of texts, whose interpretation and reinterpretation defines a field (Seidman 1994). This particular canon embeds an internalist doctrine of sociology's history as a social science. The story consists of a foundational moment arising from the internal transformation of European society; classic discipline-defining texts written by a small group of brilliant authors; and a direct line of descent from them to us. But sociologists in the classical period itself did not have this origin story. When Franklin Giddings (1896), the first professor of sociology at Columbia University, published The Principles of Sociology, he named as the founding father—Adam Smith. Victor Branford (1904), expounding 'the founders of sociology' to a meeting in London, named as the central figure—Condorcet.
This essay argues that liberation is as much a sociocultural construct as it is a political or economic one. Extending the South African queer scholar Mikki van Zyl's analysis of the distinction between citizenship and belonging, I examine the concept of freedom in postapartheid South Africa through the lens of black queer bodies. Through an analysis of Cheaters, a popular radio program broadcast in Soweto; the late kwaito star Lebo Mathosa; and ethnographic observation in the form of "quotidian conversations," I illuminate the contested terrain of queer sexuality in contemporary South Africa, particularly its intersection with class and race. Ultimately, I am interested in exploring how black queer bodies test the limits of freedom and liberation, exposing both the possibilities and the contradictions of the postapartheid state.
Heterosexual Africa? The History of an Idea from the Age of Exploration to the Age of AIDS builds from Marc Epprechtâs previous book, Hungochani (which focuses expli citly on same-sex desire in southern Africa) to explore the historical processes by which a singular, heterosexual identity for Africa was constructed—by anthropologists, ethnopsychologists, colonial officials, African elites, and most recently, health care workers seeking to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This is an eloquently written, accessible book, based on a rich and diverse range of sources, that will find enthusiastic audiences in classrooms and in the general public. Epprecht argues that Africans, just like people all over the world, have always had a range of sexualities and sexual identities. Over the course of the last two centuries, however, African societies south of the Sahara have come to be viewed as singularly heterosexual. Epprecht carefully traces the many routes by which this singularity, this heteronormativity, became a dominant culture. A fascinating story that will surely generate lively debate Epprecht makes his project speak to a range of literatures—queer theory, the new imperial history, African social history, queer and womenâs studies, and biomedical literature on the HIV/AIDS pandemic. He does this with a light enough hand that his story is not bogged down by endless references to particular debates. Heterosexual Africa? aims to understand an enduring stereotype about Africa and Africans. It asks how Africa came to be defined as a âhomosexual-free zoneâ during the colonial era, and how this idea not only survived the transition to independence but flourished under conditions of globalization and early panicky responses to HIV/AIDS.
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