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Women, visibility and morality in Kenyan popular media by Dina Ligaga TERMS of USE The African Humanities Program has made this electronic version of the book available on the NISC website for free download to use in research or private study. It may not be re- posted on book or other digital repositories that allow systematic sharing or download. For any commercial or other uses please contact the publishers, NISC (Pty) Ltd. Print copies of this book and other titles in the African Humanities Series are available through the African Books Collective. © African Humanities Program Dedication To Dan, Naledi, Akelo and Manu To my parents, Emmanuel Omondi Ligaga and Alice Obiero Ligaga and to Hilda Croxford, with love and appreciation About the Series The African Humanities Series is a partnership between the African Humanities Program (AHP) of the American Council of Learned Societies and academic publishers NISC (Pty) Ltd. The Series covers topics in African histories, languages, literatures, philosophies, politics and cultures. Submissions are solicited from Fellows of the AHP, which is administered by the American Council of Learned Societies and financially supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The purpose of the AHP is to encourage and enable the production of new knowledge by Africans in the five countries designated by the Carnegie Corporation: Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. AHP fellowships support one year’s work free from teaching and other responsibilities to allow the Fellow to complete the project proposed. Eligibility for the fellowship in the five countries is by domicile, not nationality. Book proposals are submitted to the AHP editorial board which manages the peer review process and selects manuscripts for publication by NISC. In some cases, the AHP board will commission a manuscript mentor to undertake substantive editing and to work with the author on refining the final manuscript. The African Humanities Series aims to publish works of the highest quality that will foreground the best research being done by emerging scholars in the five Carnegie designated countries. The rigorous selection process before the fellowship award, as well as AHP editorial vetting of manuscripts, assures attention to quality. Books in the series are intended to speak to scholars in Africa as well as in other areas of the world. The AHP is also committed to providing a copy of each publication in the series to university libraries in Africa. AHP Editorial Board Members as at December 2019 AHP Series Editors: Professor Adigun Agbaje, University of Ibadan, Nigeria Professor Emeritus Fred Hendricks, Rhodes University, South Africa Consultant: Professor Emeritus Sandra Barnes, University of Pennsylvania, USA (Anthropology) Board Members: 1 Professor Akosua Adomako Ampofo, Institute of African Studies, Ghana (Gender Studies & Advocacy) (Vice President, African Studies Association of Africa) 2 Professor Kofi Anyidoho, University of Ghana, Ghana (African Studies & Literature) (Director, Codesria African Humanities Institute Program) 3 Professor Ibrahim Bello-Kano, Bayero University, Nigeria (Dept of English and French Studies) 4 Professor Sati Fwatshak, University of Jos, Nigeria (Dept of History & International Studies) 5 Professor Patricia Hayes, University of the Western Cape, South Africa (African History, Gender Studies and Visuality) (SARChI Chair in Visual History and Theory) 6 Associate Professor Wilfred Lajul, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, Makerere University, Uganda (Dept of Philosophy) 7 Professor Yusufu Lawi, University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania (Dept of History) 8 Professor Bertram Mapunda, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (Dept of Archaeology & Heritage Studies) 9 Professor Innocent Pikirayi, University of Pretoria, South Africa (Chair & Head, Dept of Anthropology & Archaeology) 10 Professor Josephat Rugemalira, University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania (Dept of Foreign Languages & Linguistics) 11 Professor Idayat Bola Udegbe, University of Ibadan, Nigeria (Dept of Psychology) Published in this series Dominica Dipio, Gender terrains in African cinema, 2014 Ayo Adeduntan, What the forest told me: Yoruba hunter, culture and narrative performance, 2014 Sule E. Egya, Nation, power and dissidence in third-generation Nigerian poetry in English, 2014 Irikidzayi Manase, White narratives: The depiction of post-2000 land invasions in Zimbabwe, 2016 Pascah Mungwini, Indigenous Shona Philosophy: Reconstructive insights, 2017 Sylvia Bruinders, Parading Respectability: The Cultural and Moral Aesthetics of the Christmas Bands Movement in the Western Cape, South Africa, 2017 Michael Andindilile, The Anglophone literary-linguistic continuum: English and indigenous languages in African literary discourse, 2018 Jeremiah Arowosegbe, Claude E Ake: the making of an organic intellectual, 2018 Romanus Aboh, Language and the construction of multiple identities in the Nigerian novel, 2018 Bernard Matolino, Consensus as Democracy in Africa, 2018 Babajide Ololajulo, Unshared identity: Posthumous paternity in a contemporary Yoruba community, 2018 De-Valera NYM Botchway, Boxing is no cakewalk! Azumah ‘Ring Professor’ Nelson in the social history of Ghanaian boxing, 2019 WOMEN, VISIBILITY AND MORALITY IN KENYAN POPULAR MEDIA DINA LIGAGA Published in South Africa on behalf of the African Humanities Program by NISC (Pty) Ltd, PO Box 377, Grahamstown, 6140, South Africa www.nisc.co.za First edition, first impression 2020 Publication © African Humanities Program 2020 Text © Dina Ligaga 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. ISBN: 978-1-920033-00-0 (print) ISBN: 978-1-920033-00-0 (PDF) ISBN: 978-1-920033-00-0 (ePub) Manuscript mentor: Prof. Lynette Steenveld Project manager: Peter Lague Indexer: Sanet le Roux Cover design: Advanced Design Group Cover photographs: OOO Printed in South Africa by OOO The author and the publisher have made every effort to obtain permission for and acknowledge the use of copyright material. Should an inadvertent infringement of copyright have occurred, please contact the publisher and we will rectify omissions or errors in any subsequent reprint or edition. Contents Acknowledgements x Foreword xii Preface xv CHAPTER 1: Women, and the politics of visibility in Kenya 1 Introduction 1 Public scripts and gender policing 7 Sexuality and respectability 8 Visibility, popular culture and disruptive publics 10 Intertextuality, transmediation and the moral narrative 14 Methodological considerations 18 Structure of the book 19 Notes 21 CHAPTER 2: Femininity, stereotypes and resistance in Kenyan public cultures 23 Introduction 23 The work of the stereotype 25 Stereotypes in African popular culture 27 Femininity, domesticity and moral purity 31 Sexuality and new femininities 34 Colonialism and African women 36 Gender and the Kenyan public sphere 41 Conclusion 50 Notes 51 CHAPTER 3: Radio and the construction of African womanhood 53 Introduction 53 Radio and colonial encounters 56 vii Postcolonial politics of control 60 The state and morality in Kenya 62 Constructing ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women in radio 66 Romance, marriage and the longing for happiness 69 Infidelity and the melodramatic mode 72 Conclusion 79 Notes 80 CHAPTER 4: Scandal, surveillance and the spectacular ‘wicked’ woman 82 Introduction 82 A gendered history of the press in Kenya 83 Tabloids as locations of transgression 85 Scandal, rumour and gossip 88 Re-reading ‘mononormativity’ 90 Making women’s sexualities visible 91 Conclusion 97 Notes 98 CHAPTER 5: Consumption, good time girls and violence in public discourse 100 Introduction 100 The good time girl 102 Slut shaming and the sugar daddy phenomenon 103 The fear of the educated woman 107 Violence and death 110 The medical student who was hacked to death 111 The pregnant student who was stabbed multiple times 113 The graduate student’s body found on busy highway 114 Transgression 120 Conclusion 122 Notes 122 viii CHAPTER 6: Women celebrities, hypervisibility and digital subjectivity in Kenya 126 Introduction 126 Hypervisibility and being difficult 126 Digital subjectivities and imagining freedom 128 Celebrities as critical commentary 129 Spectacular femininities 133 Instagram as autobiography 137 On being outrageous: Conclusion 139 Notes 140 CHAPTER 7: Conclusion 142 BIBLIOGRAPHY 147 INDEX 168 ix Acknowledgements The manuscript for this publication was prepared with the support of the African Humanities Fellowship Program established by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) with a generous grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. I am also grateful for funding from the National Research Foundation of South Africa which assisted in bringing this project to fruition. I am indebted to the African Humanities Program (AHP) postdoctoral fellowship for the opportunities it made available to me. In 2014, I participated in the AHP Manuscript Development Workshop (MDW) held in Dar es Salaam. I would like to thank Andrzje Tymowski, International Program Director at ACLS, who has always gone above and beyond to ensure the success of the program, and for the stimulating conversations at the MDW. I would also like to thank Eszter Csicsai who was the program coordinator of the AHP at the time, as well as the AHP advisors — Adigun Agbaje, Innocent

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