Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the male performance of female identity on digital platforms in Kenya. We read the performances as lenses through which to assess the said re-presentation of gender identity in a sense that resonates with post-structural perspectives on gender identification.

Paper long abstract:

One of the emergent popular cultures in Kenya in the age of digital technologies has been the experimental forms of social identification that are staged on social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Dina Ligaga (2012) has referred to these as virtual expressions and sees them as creative productions that are possible because of the internet as an alternative space where popular cultures are produced and circulated, and she significantly argues that one needs to explore the context in which such cultures are produced. We follow up on this argument by problematizing the concepts of ‘context’ and ‘alternative space’ that we consider to have unique significance to the drag queen performance in Kenya. We use context in terms of the digital cultures of celebrity as well as the social construction and policing of gender identity in Kenya. It is in this sense that we locate the drag queen performance as located at the interface between the social media cultures of social identity approval that use the grammar of comments and likes as well as the politics of gender identity as situated social discourse. We use relevant elements of digital research methodology as well as ethnography to collect and process data, which is mainly drawn from TikTok, Facebook and YouTube. We explore the work of notable artists across the said platforms but narrow down to three for closer thematic analysis. These are Kinuthia, Flaqoraz, Shaniqua, and Senge Helena. We forge a theoretical tool out of relevant strands of camp aesthetics, gender theory, and popular culture. In the end, we aim to contribute to the developing discourse on the appropriation of the digital technologies in social transformation in this part of the world.