Authenticating Sexuality: Sexual Ideology and HIV Science in South Africa Kirk John Fiereck Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Columbia University 2015 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! © 2015 Kirk John Fiereck All rights reserved ABSTRACT Authenticating Sexuality: Sexual Ideology and HIV Science in South Africa Kirk Fiereck This dissertation examines the emergence of queer personhood among black publics and medical cultures in South Africa over the past century. Based on more than two years of fieldwork in South Africa, it contains both a historical and an ethnographic component. The historical research was comprised of archival research and 16 life history interviews exploring how black South Africans reference multiple cultural fields of sexual and gender identities to elaborate composite formations of sexual subjectivity and personhood. In the ethnographic component, I conducted participant-observation and 70 in-depth interviews among various groups, including a number of queer, non-governmental organizations and two global health, HIV-focused clinical sites. In these settings, I examined how social actors, in the context of community settings and global health and community development projects, address sexual and gender nonconformity. Contents Acknowledgments ii Chapter One – Introduction: Disorienting Sexuality 1 - Between the Constitution and the Customary 8 - Juxtaposing Personhood and Sexual Ideology 11 - Urban South Africa and the HIV and AIDS Industry 17 - Field Topographies and Methodologies 20 - On Ideology 32 - Reinterpreting Gender and Sexuality in South Africa 40 Chapter Two – Rethinking Sexuality: Race, Ethnicity and Gendered Homoerotic Desire in Historical Perspective 44 - Key Concepts 47 - The 1907 Enquiry into Unnatural Vice 56 - Reinterpreting the 1907 Enquiry 59 - The Normativity of Gendered Homosocial Marriages 69 - On Historical Ontology and Pragmatic Personhood 75 - Customary Gendered Relations in Life History Narratives 81 Chapter Three – Authenticating (Homo)Sexuality: Ethno-Sexual Politics and Cultural Authenticity in South Africa 91 - Case Study: Ethno-Sexual Ideologies as Political Spectacle 93 - Dressing the Part(s) 100 - Composite Sexual Subjectivities at the Margins of Sexual Ideologies 113 - Case Study: Rearticulating Xhosa Sexual and Gendered Personhood 120 - Self-Fashioning through Xhosa Initiation 127 - Dangers of “Disclosure” 132 Chapter Four – Inhabiting Ideologies: Composite Sexual Subjectivities and Juxtaposed Personhood 138 - Suppressed Presence of Customary Gender Relations 140 - Anatomy of a Protest, or How to Inhabit Multiple Ideologies 154 - Queer Subjectivities, Queering Subjectivity 166 - Comported Vernaculars: “Actions Speak Louder Than Words” 173 - Sexual Ontopolitics 177 - Rethinking Sexual Subjectivity by Reading through Sexual Ideology 180 Chapter Five – Techno-Sexuality and Expertise: The Emergence of the MSM and WSW Categories in South Africa 186 - Colonizing Categories 186 - Dueling Discourses: Between and Beyond LGBTQ NGO and Health NGO Discourses 200 - Experts and Lay Publics 208 - Images of the Intimate 211 - Structures of Looking and the Stereotype 223 Chapter Six – Cultural Conundrums, Or the (Bio)Materiality of Sexual Ideology 225 - The Context of PrEP 228 - Epidemiological Knowledge Production as an Ethical Concern 232 - Epidemiology’s Disunity 236 - Making Up MSM in South Africa 247 - Deconstructing MSM 250 - The Ethics of PrEP in South Africa 253 - Multiple MSM, Multiple PrEPs 257 Conclusion 262 Bibliography 272 i " ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The gifts and debts that I have incurred throughout my graduate study at Columbia, during my time in the field, and throughout the writing of this text are perhaps to many to be able to acknowledge them adequately. As solitary as the process of designing, carrying out and writing a dissertation might seem, it is undeniable that innumerable others have contributed to this dissertation. I would like to briefly acknowledge some of these personal and intellectual debts in the hopes of acknowledging the contributions to this piece of writing that, while the mistakes and inadequacies are entirely my own, have nonetheless benefitted from the generosity of mind, character and spirit of innumerable others. These relationships have shaped who I am as a person, young scholar, partner, son, brother and friend. First and foremost I want to thank my family, and particularly my parents, John and Lee Ann. Although they were never quite sure of what exactly it was that I was working so hard on the past eight years, they nonetheless supported me steadfastly, through thick and thin, to complete this “paper” (their term). Likewise, I also thank my two partners (in crime and other more upstanding pursuits) on both sides of the Atlantic: Shaun and Miro. Both of them were critical to helping me to push through the difficult times during coursework, fieldwork and the writing up stages of the dissertation. To both of them, I am eternally grateful and hope that I can somehow show them how much their sacrifices and support has meant to me. Intellectually, I have been privileged to have been influenced and directed by some of the best academic scholars and a number of institutions. At Columbia, I thank all of my dissertation committee members, in particular my sponsor, Richard Parker and my chair, Lesley Sharp. Their contributions to my intellectual development cannot be summarized in writing, but without them I would have been lost in the field. The innumerable milestones they helped me to achieve in the doctoral program are too many to list. Needless to say, without them my field research and this dissertation would not have been possible. Other ii " members of the committee left numerous indelible marks on my development as a scholar. I have benefited greatly from rigorous training I received from Carole Vance and the critical thinking she instills in every student she teaches. Mamadou Diouf taught me how to be an infinitely generous and thoughtful scholar. Although he may not know it, he stepped in at a number of junctures in my conceptualization of this project. He has affected its scope and direction in ways that have been critically important to my understanding of this subject. In courses I have taken with Nadia Abu El-Haj, she helped me to think theoretically about a vast range of issues that have become central to the analyses presented here. Other eminent scholars at Columbia University also shaped my intellectual and personal outlook in ways that continue to influence my work. These individuals include Kim Hopper, Karolynn Siegel, Helen-Maria Lekas, Peter Messeri, Jennifer Hirsch, Hlonipha Mokoena, Rosalind Morris and Beth Povinelli. In South Africa, I must thank fellow scholars at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) who graciously invited me to be part of their scholarly community in the Department of Anthropology during my field research. Interactions with these scholars helped me when I felt directionless during my forays into what is the complex urban cacophony otherwise known as Johannesburg. These individuals include Hylton White, Nolwazi Mkhwanazi, Robert Thornton, and Julia Hornberger. Although not at Wits, a number of South African public intellectuals were centrally involved in helping me to conceptualize and understand the complexity of the field in which I was immersed for more than two years of my life. I owe great debts to Zethu Matabeni, Graeme Reid, Mark Gevisser, Edwin Cameron, Vasu Reddy, James MacIntyre, John Imrie, Helen Struthers, Pierre Brouard, Pierre de Vos, and Juan Nel. I would also like to thanks and acknowledge a number of close friends who made helped me make Johannesburg and sometimes Cape Town a home, rather than just a field site. A big hug and thank to each of them: William Ndatila, Akua Koranteng, Daniel Mokahlane, Zola Ncapayi, Mpho Sekwele, and Gift Mazibuko. iii " To the many LGBT and queer activists who work tirelessly to address the context of violence, vulnerability and insecurity that gay, lesbian, queer and gender non/conforming South African face on a daily basis, I dedicate this dissertation to them. " iv " CHAPTER ONE – INTRODUCTION: DISORIENTING SEXUALITY One of the most unexpected instances of what I refer to in this dissertation as authenticating sexuality occurred towards the end of my field research. In August 2012, on one of my last follow-up field visits to Johannesburg,1 I was asked by a colleague in the Department of Anthropology at a local university to give a guest lecture in a course she was teaching on the “Anthropology of Gender in South Africa.” Prior to the seminar, we had decided that I would discuss the topic of the invention of heterosexuality in lieu of the perennial media attention and public debates circulating in South Africa that cast homosexuality as “un-African.” In preparation for the seminar, we assigned Jonathan Ned Katz’s text on the topic of inventing heterosexuality (Katz 1990), and watched the hour-long BBC World Debate “Is Homosexuality Un-African?” in class (see chapter 3 for an in-depth analysis of this media spectacle, which was also part of my field research). The basic premise of the seminar was to have students critically discuss the rhetorical question posed by the BBC Debate. I also was curious to find out what the debate meant for them in light of Katz’s analysis that