Canadian Journal of African Studies Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines
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Canadian Journal of African Studies Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines Volume 43 Number 1 / Numéro 1 2009 Canadian Journal of African Studies Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines Volume 43 Number 1 / Numéro 1 2009 Special Issue / Numéro spécial New Perspectives on Sexualities in Africa / Les sexualités africaines dans leurs nouvelles perspectives Contents / Sommaire New Perspectives on Sexualities in Africa: Introduction Marc Epprecht 1 Les sexualités africaines dans leurs nouvelles perspectives: Introduction Charles Gueboguo 8 The Widow, the Will, and Widow-inheritance in Kampala: Revisiting Victimisation Arguments Stella Nyanzi, Margaret Emodu-Walakira, and Wilberforce Serwaniko 12 Faith in God, But Not in Condoms: Churches and Competing Visions of HIV Prevention in Namibia Nicole Rigillo 34 Sur les rétributions des pratiques homosexuelles à Bamako Christophe Broqua 60 Deaf, Gay, HIV Positive, and Proud: Narrating an Alternative Identity in Post-Apartheid South Africa Karin Willemse and Ruth Morgan with John Meletse 84 “Mombasa Morans”: Embodiment, Sexual Morality, and Samburu Men in Kenya George Paul Meiu 106 ii Research Note / Note de recherche Penser les “droits” des homosexuels/les en Afrique: du sens et de la puissance de l’action associative militante au Cameroun Charles Gueboguo 130 Review Articles / Études bibliographiques African Feminists on Sexualities Signe Arnfred 152 Sexualities, Pleasure, and Politics in Southern Africa Bodil Folke Frederiksen 161 Southern African Homosexualities and Denials Stephen O. Murray 168 Contre l’homophobie en Afrique Patrick Awondo 174 African Perspectives on Female Circumcision Amy Kaler 179 Same-Sex Sexuality Issues in Some African Popular Media Unoma Azuah 185 Book Reviews / Comptes rendus Sévérin Cécile Abéga. Violence Sexuelle et l’Etat au Cameroun. Sybille N. Nyeck 188 Julian B. Carter. The Heart of Whiteness: Normal Sexuality and Race in America, 1880-1940. Barrington Walker 190 Catherine Cole, Takyiwaa Manuh and Stephan Miescher, eds. Africa After Gender? Brigitte Bagnol 192 Cary Alan Johnson. Off the Map: How HIV/AIDS Programming Is Failing Same-Sex Practicing People in Africa. Amanda Lock Swarr 195 iii Eleanor Maticka-Tyndale, Richmond Tiemoko and Paulina Makinwa-Adebusoye, eds. Human Sexuality in Africa: Beyond Reproduction. Robert Morrell 198 Ruth Morgan and Saskia Wieringa, eds. Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men and Ancestral Wives: Female Same-Sex Practices in Africa. Sam Bullington 201 Nicoli Nattrass. Mortal Combat: AIDS Denialism and the Struggle for Antiretrovirals in South Africa. Mary Caesar 204 Stephanie Newell. The Forger’s Tale: The Search for Odeziaku. Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju 206 Alexander Rödlach. Witches, Westerners and HIV: AIDS and Cultures of Blame in Africa. Allison Goebel 208 Tamara Shefer, Kopano Ratele, A. Strebel, N. Shabalala and R. Buikema, eds. From Boys to Men: Social Constructions of Masculinity in Contemporary Society. Mikki van Zyl 211 Works Cited / Ouvrages cités 215 Contributors / Collaborateurs 235 iv New Perspectives on Sexualities in Africa: Introduction Marc Epprecht To study sexuality is to study everything: power, culture, science, discourse, psychology, colonialism, political economy, health, tourism, among other phenomena. Indeed, sexuality, meaning simply the ways that we feel, understand, express, and represent ourselves as physiologically sexual beings, lies at the core of human being-ness. It shapes and is shaped by gender, race, class, ethnicity, religion, nationality, and almost any other social identities and relationships one can imagine. Sexuality can be spectacularly creative, joyful and affirming. It can be powerfully subversive of the oppressive lines and categories that societies often draw. Yet it is also often a vector for some of the worst and most intractable forms of violence in the world. Efforts to constrain naturally rambunctious sexuality within an ideologi - cal framework of “normal” or “respectable” have historically exacted a high toll in lives and health. Sexually transmitted infec - tions, for example, are often exacerbated in scope and morbidity by heteronormative definitions and policing of appropriate desire that create the space for secrets and eroticize risk. Pressure to conform to heterosexual norms also exposes young people world-wide to unsafe sex as safer alternatives are disparaged or actively discour - aged. In much of Africa today, the harmful impacts of such pres - sures and unspoken assumptions about diverse non-normative practices are glaringly evident in the devastating prevalence of HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence, including rape, homophobia, and men’s recalcitrance to match condom use with multiple concurrent sexual partners (see among many others to make this point, Becker et al 1999; Kalipeni et al 2004; Abdool-Karim and Abdool-Karim 2005; Steyn and van Zyl 2009). Given the centrality of sexuality to the human experience, its 1 2 cjas / rcea 43: 1 2009 study in scientific and other disciplined scholarly terms is a rela - tively recent development. Pioneers in theorizing the diversity and mutability of human sexuality, such as Karsch-Haack, Krafft- Ebbing, Ellis, and Freud, wrote in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Anthropology played a key role in this emerg - ing field of study by adding an ever-growing catalogue of specific cultural manifestations to the general theories. This included, however, many highly dubious claims by cultural outsiders to expertise on the topic, with pure speculation and second-hand anecdotes often passed off as scientific fact (see Bleys 1995; Lyons and Lyons 2004, notably; but also Epprecht 2008). Indeed, not until a research team led by Alfred Kinsey six decades ago did scholars first enumerate sexual practices in a methodologically disciplined manner. The work of Kinsey, Pomeroy and Martin (1948, 1953) fundamentally challenged popular understanding of actually-exist - ing American society and stimulated both furious public debates and an explosion of new empirical research. Historians only began substantitvely to engage with the issues in the 1970s, with Michel Foucault (1978) playing a similar inspirational role (Canaday 2009). African and Africanist scholars were relatively slow to take up this line of enquiry. To research African sexuality was to revisit painful racist stereotypes of Black Peril or loose women accummu - lated from the colonial era. Indeed, since the baseline of sexuality research in Africa had been laid down by ethnographers often with close ties (and sometimes active support) of colonial regimes, even scholars of gender generally steered clear of the topic for fear of association. When they did broach it, it was often in defensive or romantic terms that promoted misleading counter-myths about a singular African sexuality (Kenyatta [1938] 1961, as an important early example). In other cases, sexuality research was brushed aside by the presumption that there were more pressing things to do (such as fight colonialism and apartheid, understand poverty, and develop or build national consciousness) The advent of HIV/AIDS shattered that sense of priorities and the etiquette of avoiding talk about sexuality in Africa. HIV/AIDS exposed as false the presumption that sexuality was marginal to the big development debates. In the urgency to do something and to produce scholarship that might be useful in the struggle against HIV/AIDS, however, many clumsy mistakes were made. Early Epprecht: New Perspectives on Sexualities in Africa 3 epidemiological studies often unwittingly reiterated colonial stereotypes about a singular “African sexuality,” including such erroneous notions as homosexuality and bisexuality not existing in Africa south of the Sahara except where introduced by foreign influences. More careful and theoretically-informed research has steadily chipped away at those stereotypes, showing, for example, the historical, contingent, and plural nature of homosexualities in different contexts and in relation to the wider political economy (Gay 1985; Achmat 1993; Moodie with Ndatshe 1994; Gevisser and Cameron 1994; Murray and Roscoe 1998 must be counted among the pioneers in this respect; but see also new contributions by African activists in Morgan and Wieringa 2005; GALZ 2008). A similar trajectory can be discerned in scholarship that has moved from simplistic narratives of women’s and girls’ victimization by such practices as female genital cutting to unravelling complex motivations, struggles, and even “empowerment” within specific historical and cultural circumstances (such as Nypan 1991; Dellotenberg 2004; Boddy 2007). The need further to challenge blindspots and essentialisms around sexuality in Africa with meticulous research is evident, and has produced a growing number of calls to re-think even the most basic received knowledge (Arnfred 2004, notably, in addition to many of the books and special issues of journals reviewed in this volume). As a result, there is now a wealth of remarkably insight - ful and sensitive research that sheds light not just on hidden strug - gles in Africa, and on the multiplicity and protean nature of sexualities there. The new research also holds potential to invigo - rate scholarship and analytic models or concepts coming out of eurocentric Freudian or Foucaudian traditions on a global scale. This special issue of the Canadian Journal of African Studies aims to engage the new research and to interpret both theoretical debates and empirical evidence for an audience that otherwise may not