QUEERING THE AFTERMATH: RETHINKING THE QUEER IN POSTCOLONIAL AND THE (POST)COLONIAL IN QUEER by Robert LaRue DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Texas at Arlington May, 2016 Arlington, Texas Supervising Committee: Penelope Ingram, Supervising Professor Stacy Alaimo Cedrick May ii ABSTRACT Queering the Aftermath: Rethinking the Queer in Postcolonial and the (Post)Colonial in Queer Robert LaRue, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Arlington, 2016 Supervising Professor: Penelope Ingram “Queering the Aftermath: Rethinking the Queer in Postcolonial and the (Post)colonial in Queer,” argues the necessity for a sustained dialogue between the fields of postcolonial studies and queer studies. The paucity of analysis of queerness within postcolonial discourse, along with dearth of analysis of systems of colonialism which undergird much of queer studies impedes both discourses’ aims for challenging the systems of normativity upon which Western hegemony is built. With a focus on sub-Saharan African queer narratives, this work finds that, contrary to common perception, queerness in Africa operates in a myriad of forms that are unrecognized in U.S. notions of queerness. On the one hand, failure to recognize the presence of these forms of contributes to representations of African nations as being among “the most homophobic” nations in the world. On the other hand, failure to recognize the presence of these forms serve to displace systems of oppression. Alongside novels, such as Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters and K. Sello Duiker’s Thirteen Cents, this text examines short fiction published by queer African individuals, while emphasizing how these texts reflect and respond to discourses that produce legislation such iii as the recent Ugandan anti-homosexuality bill. “Queering the Aftermath” explore how queer postcolonial Africans challenge both the discourse of postcolonialism, which more often than not fails to address the ways in which queer sexualities intersect with issues of gender, race, and globalization, as well as the assumption that all expressions of queerness stem from, and therefore look like Western expressions of queerness. Copyright by Robert LaRue 2016 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank my Supervising Committee, especially Dr. Penelope Ingram, for their dedication to this work and its success. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................................................. v Introduction: ................................................................................................................................................. 1 The Battle over Material(ity): The Postcolonial Text ................................................................................ 2 Queer, Here ............................................................................................................................................... 3 Achebe’s Thing Fall Apart and the Dangers of “Outing” a Postcolonial Text ......................................... 11 Chapter by Chapter ................................................................................................................................. 18 CHAPTER ONE: A MOMENT OF SILENCE: QUEER(NESS) IN POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES AND QUEER THEORY .................................................................................................................................................................... 23 Postcolonial Queer Identity: Negotiating between private desires and national consciousness .......... 37 In Context: Ugandan Queer Identities .................................................................................................... 47 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................................. 59 CHAPTER TWO: A RACE FOR HOME: QUEER HISTORIES IN PRE- AND POSTCOLONIAL SPACES ................. 61 Studies in Search of “Traditional” Homosexuality .................................................................................. 64 Queering the “Traditional” ..................................................................................................................... 72 CHAPTER THREE: QUEST(IONS) OF THE EROTIC CHILD: FINDING PLEASURE, AND REDEFINING THE TROPE OF THE CHILD IN K. SELLO DUIKER’S THIRTEEN CENTS ............................................................................... 80 Establishing the Trope of the Child ......................................................................................................... 92 Attempting to Save “the Children” ....................................................................................................... 104 CHAPTER FOUR: QUEER OBJECT(ION)S IN THE POSTCOLONY: LETTING OBJECTS SPEAK IN SILENT PLACES .................................................................................................................................................................. 125 Object Accomplices ............................................................................................................................... 129 Things to Distract .................................................................................................................................. 136 Things to Dis-member ........................................................................................................................... 140 Things to Deny ...................................................................................................................................... 144 Things to Re-member............................................................................................................................ 148 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 152 CONCLUSIONS ........................................................................................................................................... 153 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................................................... 160 1 Introduction: Literature offers one of the most important ways in which these new perceptions [shaped by the experience of colonialism] are expressed and it is in their writing, and through other arts such as painting, sculpture, music, and dance that the day- to-day realities experienced by colonized peoples have been most powerfully encoded and so profoundly influential. Bill Ashcroft, Helen Tiffin, and Gareth Griffiths, The Empire Writes Back There is a tendency to read the Nation rather restrictively; either, as the ideological apparatus of state power, somewhat redefined by a hasty, functionalist reading of Foucault or Bakhtin; or, in a more utopian inversion, as the incipient or emergent expression of the “national-popular” sentiment preserved in a radical memory. Homi Bhabha, “Introduction” to Nation and Narration This is a project aimed at emphasizing the fact that postcolonial queer lives matter. I make this statement with full knowledge that it constitutes an act of signifyin(g), thus performing an ironic return, of sorts. After all, is Gates’ famous treatise, The Signifying Monkey, not, at its core, an attempt to de-queer black literary and linguistic traditions, an attempt to set straight, so to speak, the rhetorical and literary qualities that often made black “speech” so strange? In positing a project aimed at establishing that “postcolonial queer lives matter,” I am obviously echoing the proclamation of the Black Lives Matter movement. This is no simple reverberation. Nor is it an 2 attempt to dilute the impact of claiming a space for black American lives in a culture that so desperately works to position those very lives as aberrant. My claiming that “postcolonial queer lives matter” is an attempt to hold to the very core of this project. When I first began this project, I had grand ideas of both the scope of and the approach to the questions and materials I would take on. I envisioned this work being not only textual but (new) material as well. I soon found myself, however, constrained by the prescriptions of the field. Expectations of a “literary” emphasis slowly eroded my plans to address not only literary representations but also (new) material effects and affects. As I watched each chapter sacrifice “real” postcolonial bodies for textual ones, I became more and more conflicted. I never intended a purely “literary” study. But where is the line between the discursive and the (new) material, especially where the postcolony is concerned? The Battle over Material(ity): The Postcolonial Text Literature’s role in both the expression and construction of material reality is undeniable. Yes, with its concerns, tricks, and applications of language, literature most immediately rests in the realm of the discursive. But these discursive texts are often used to shape everyday behaviors, as people “wad[e] through popular journalism, medical textbooks, epidemiological data, biochemistry handbooks, or other scientific studies” (Alamo 97). These texts and the everyday “specialists” they help to produce function not in the disciplined spaces