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- Convenors:
-
Robert Lorway
(University of Manitoba)
Lucy Wanjiku Mungala (University of Amsterdam)
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- Stream:
- Social Anthropology
- Location:
- Appleton Tower, Seminar Room 2.05
- Sessions:
- Thursday 13 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Attempts to protect LGBT Africans permeate international development. In this panel, we consider how a hyper-focused biopolitical regime emphasizes the 'exceptional' suffering of LGBT Africans. What sorts of moral projects, and profound disruptions, are animated within these fields of rescue?
Long Abstract:
Vibrant attempts to protect LGBT Africans permeate global health and development. This attention can be considered warranted, given the extreme forms of violence and deprivation queer Africans endure. However, this panel invites perspectives less considered in development agendas: how a hyper-focused biopolitical regime emphasizes the 'exceptional' suffering of LGBT Africans. What sorts of moral projects are animated within these transnational fields of rescue? How does furnishing resources (i.e., funding, health services, travel, per diems, social gatherings, public events, literature, media attention, volunteer opportunities, and so on), devoted to the special protection of LGBT Africans, transform the lifeworlds of those who become drawn into these varied projects, including those who refuse LGBT identifications? How does the emphasis on the exceptional suffering of LGBT Africans constitute the shadowy underside of a biopolitical regime that not only excludes people, but even exacerbates human misery? We examine the unexpected solidarities and connections, and profound disruptions, that form within and across African states in the name of protecting LGBT people.
Bringing together researchers in the field of anthropology, art, politics, development, media and queer studies, our panel aims to discuss how a coalescence of interventions in Africa—re-founded in liberal humanitarian claims of what constitutes the deserving subject of aid—opens up and forecloses practical and political opportunities for those deemed in need of rescue because of their perceived vulnerabilities.
Abstract topics include: transnational advocacy; asylum seeking and 'the camp'; global health, 'MSM' and HIV prevention and care; and anti-violence and legal support.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 13 June, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
The space for organizations targeting LGBT persons with HIV and human rights interventions in Kenya has flourished in the recent past. This paper explores the contours of class/power relations in the delivery of HIV and human rights interventions targeting the MSM community.
Paper long abstract:
Kenya is one of the few countries in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) that have made substantive progress in providing HIV services to homosexual men as demonstrated by the number of homosexual-led and international organizations with activities targeting them. However, challenges with regards to human rights abound. Drawing on ethnography study conducted between 2010 and 2018 in Nairobi and Mombasa, I examine the historical continuities, disruptions, and fortification of social stratification leading to their inclusion and exclusion in HIV and human rights interventions. Specifically, I take a critical view into the emergence of homosexuality led -organizations and celebrity activism that aim to rescue the MSM community from social exclusions and explore how the delivery of HIV prevention and care and of human rights interventions are navigated. I argue that while, on one hand, the global actors have stepped up local efforts in HIV and other human interventions resulting in positive affects and 'visibility' of MSM, on the other hand, these organizations create power inequalities in the homosexual spaces, which jeopardize the 'rescue' efforts. The paper concludes by recognizing the effects of entanglement of HIV interventions, human rights activism and imbricated class stratification histories resulting in social exclusions within interventions targeting men who have sex with men.
Paper short abstract:
Sexual rights activism relies on openness. Queer organising in Senegal shows that discretion (sutura in Wolof) is key however. The challege for organisations is to reconcile these seemingly incompatible positions, to secure credibility and enhance the space for same-sex intimacies in society.
Paper long abstract:
Sexual rights activism relies on openness. The question that is often debated is whether such efforts will 'free' African queers from 'the closet', or whether they create a local backlash in the form of increased social and political homophobia. In this paper, I propose that it is more fruitful to examine how the sexual rights discourse and its activism are adopted and molded by queer Africans and their organisations, and to examine how globalising discourses transform spaces for navigating same-sex intimacies. This paper is based on six months of ethnographic fieldwork in urban Senegal, predominantly Dakar. Queer organising in Senegal shows that discretion (sutura in Wolof) is key. The challenge for organisations is to reconcile the seemingly incompatible positions of openness and sutura, to secure international and local credibility. This paper explores how two queer organisations are engaged in the creation of social spaces for queer women. Rather than focusing on the political debate about sexual rights, this paper focuses on the social role of these organisations. I will argue that instead of seeing local queer activism as a move towards a global gay culture and as the adoption of the globalising sexual rights discourse, it must be understood as an ambiguous realm that combines sociopolitical work on the enlargement of the space for same-sex intimacies with work from a distinctly local background whereby social events and care are organised with respect for the value of sutura (discretion, modesty).
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines queer life in Ghana, focusing on the political practices and experiences of working class queer men, or 'sasoi'. The paper highlights the moments of hope, solidarity and resistance that make up everyday saso politics and, in so doing, troubles narratives of 'African homophobia'.
Paper long abstract:
Recent queer scholarship from Africa has challenged narratives of 'African homophobia', depicting instead the diverse and multifaceted ways queer Africans are coming together to organise and assert their rights. This paper builds on and expands this literature by examining the lived experience of working class queer men in Accra, locally referred to as sasoi, who work as HIV peer educators for Men who have Sex with Men (MSM). It draws on 13 months of ethnographic research conducted among queer community networks and two human rights NGOs in Accra in 2014-2015. The paper finds that, caught in between public health discourse and interventions on HIV and sexual rights, local understandings and practices of queer sexuality, and structures of heteronormativity, sasoi fashion a pragmatic, hybridised approach to queer sexual politics and activism. While homophobia and heteronormativity profoundly shape saso experiences, working class queer lives are equally constituted through quotidian acts of solidarity and resistance that go against the grain of political, cultural, and religious homophobia. In this way, the paper seeks to depict the complex realities of working class queer life in Ghana, to trouble monochrome portrayals of 'African homophobia', and to centre moments of hope, strength, joy, and defiance in the struggle for queer rights and liberation.
Paper short abstract:
Strategic storytelling and media representations of violence against LGBT Kenyans are vital pathways between international norms and local practices. We argue that the grand narrative of Global LGBT solidarity overshadows the complex localized terrain where human suffering and rescue are negotiated.
Paper long abstract:
International LGBT institutional actors, and the streams of funding they afford, have been crucial in the assembly of transnational networks that advance LGBT rights concerns throughout Africa. Strategic storytelling and popular media representations that depict the human rights violations of LGBT Kenyans indeed have become a vital passageway between international norms and local practices. Analysing a series of transnationally-networked events, including Rights Out There; This is my Pride (Amsterdam); Out Film Festival and Upinde Awards (formerly the Gay and Lesbian Awards in Nairobi), highlights various modes of active resistance that form the basis for collective action.
We consider these events as solidarity performances that operate as crucial sites in the production and dissemination of ideas of 'being LGBT' in Kenya. Deploying various rhetorical technologies, these solidarity performances go beyond providing physical safe spaces for dialogue to take place. Rather, these sites open up vital spaces in which particular aesthetics of solidarity are rehearsed, rhetorical styles are honed and social media messaging is refined--all of which are amplified through film, art and storytelling, thus enabling Kenyan activists to express local priorities within global frames of reference. By analyzing such transnational connections and interventions, this paper critically examines the relationship between transnationally-supported LGBT networks and the grand narrative of solidarity. While these connections are made to link local realities to a particular global audience, these performances also challenge and unsettle the processes through which global agendas of dominant LGBT network allies take hold and are reproduced in Kenyan localities.