Full Description
Transafrica explores this new lexical culture in cultural materials (novels, poetry, testimonies/life stories, interviews, film, visual art) in English, French, Arabic and other selected African languages, and the meanings which Africans have transnationally conferred upon "queer" and "transgender"—from North to South. Gender nonconformity and sexual dissidence on the African continent has produced a lexical culture at the crossroads of Western discourse and local African naming practices.
Transafrica is an unprecedented attempt at identifying the new vocabularies which queer and transgender Africans have used in the first two decades of the 21st century to refer to themselves and narrativize their desire, in the face of official narratives by medical doctors, and legal and religious authorities that have often been prioritized over a gender-variant (queer, trans, non-binary) individual's lived experience, resulting in a systemic disempowerment.
Using case studies from Morocco, Egypt, Somalia, Nigeria, Uganda, Madagascar, Botswana, South Africa and more, Transafrica draws conclusions for a culture-specific and history-specific type of gender diversity outside of Western epistemic borders while confronting Euro-American models, thereby auguring a turn-of-the-third-millennium postqueer set of African open-ended identities.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chantal Zabus and Chris Dunton
CASE-STUDIES
I.Islamic Africa
1.Powers of resistance and the Lexicon of Post-Queer Sexuality in Muhammad Abdelnabi's In the Spider's Room
Omar Boukhatem, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, France
2.Visualising Transgender Morocco: Daoud Aoulad-Syad's Bye-Bye Souirty (Adieu Forain)
Todd W. Reeser, University of Pittsburgh, USA
3.Diasporic Trans/Forming in Diriye Osman's The Butterfly Jungle, Afdhere Jama's Being Queer and Somali, Tofik Dibi's Djinn, and Lamya H's Hijab Butch Blues
John C. Hawley, University of Santa Clara, USA
II.West Africa
4.'Dare Speak Their Name': The Poetry of Logan February
Chris Dunton, formerly of National University of Lesotho
5.'Deliver us from Evil': Pentecostal Christianity, Queer Sexualities and the Language of Deliverance in Nigerian Literature
Adriaan Van Klinken, University of Leeds, UK, and Belinda Makinana, Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa
6.Non)Genealogical Radical Queerness: On A Schizophrenic Reading of Frieda Ekotto's Chuchote pas trop
Naminata Diabate, Cornell University, USA
III.Southern Africa
7. Translects: Post-Queering Transgender in South African and Nigerian Autofictions
Chantal Zabus, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, France
8.'The Sarimbavy of Madagascar: Beyond Semantic Boundaries and the Politics of (In)visibilisation
Alyette Rajaofera Andriamasinalivao, University of Paris-Diderot, France & Université d' Antananarivo, Madagascar
9.The Eco-Queer Tree of South African Constitutionalism
Francois Lion-Cachet, University of Cape Town, South Africa
TESTIMONIES
10.1995, Reading the Signs of the time
Philippe-Joseph Salazar, University of Cape Town, South Africa
11.'Transafrica: Joan Hambidge to Chantal Zabus
Joan Hambidge, University of Cape Town, South Africa
12.Ó: An Essay on Pronouns and Power Among the Yorùbá
Logan February, Purdue University, USA
13.'After Queer, After Decriminalization: Botswana: John McAllister and Katlego K. Kolanyane-Kesupile in Conversation'
John McAllister, formerly of the University of Botswana, Gaborone, and Katlego K. Kolanyane-Kesupile
