Queer(ing) popular culture

Homo-erotic provocations from Kinshasa

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2173151
AutoresThomas Hendriks (0000-0002-7676-6171, African Studies Centre, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK)
Año2019
Volumen31
Número1
Páginas71-88
Fecha de publicación2019-01-02
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of African Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1369-6815 • E-ISSN: 1469-9346
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13696815.2017.1341833
OpenAlexW2736454683
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas12
Referencias citadas29

Contemporary African societies are regularly depicted as inherently homophobic cultural spaces by Western media. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among self-consciously effeminate fioto men and their so-called 'normal' boyfriends in Kinshasa (DRC), this article troubles such monolithic images of 'African homophobia'. My interlocutors' deliberately provocative readings of music, video clips, urban painting and street performances bring to the fore surprisingly queer complicities within popular culture. Rather than dis-covering a 'gay' subculture hiding in the shadows of the city, this article reveals the possibilities for sexual eccentricity at the surface of urban life and demonstrates how, despite its often moralistic and sometimes violent messages, popular culture is itself always already queer. Moreover, pointing at the usually overlooked homoerotic affordances of urban ambiance as a social field for the accumulation of 'transgressive capital', my fioto interlocutors celebrate the proliferation of queer desires in spite of – and, perhaps, because of – everyday performances of homophobia

Aesthetics · Art · Ethnography · Human sexuality · Media studies · Popular culture · Queer · Sociology · Subculture (biology · Urban culture · African history and culture studies · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · African Studies and Ethnography · Anthropology · Gender Studies