Post-Colonial Histories of Sexuality

The Political Invention of a Libidinal African Straight

Bibliographic Data

ID2102859
AuthorsBasile Ndjio (0000-0002-1867-5124, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume82
Issue4
Pages609-631
Publication date2012-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAfrica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0001-9720 • E-ISSN: 1750-0184
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0001972012000526
OpenAlexW2068029040
LanguageEN
Citations received37
References cited35

This study addresses the problem of sexuality and ideology in relation to (pan)-Africanist doctrines that have been instrumental in the effort of post-colonial African elites to constitute an exclusive African sexual selfhood. The focus is on their efforts to 'Africanize' the sexuality of the masses in a global context that dramatizes the uncontrolled flow of sexual desires, and favours the emergence of new forms of sexual expressions and practices that destabilize the post-colonial sexual order. The leading question informing this study is how a hegemonic heterosexual identity has come to be internalized in post-colonial Africa, and how both men and women have come to believe that to be 'good' citizens or 'real' Africans they have to become repressed subjects who not only limit their sexuality solely to heterosexual desires, but also have a natural aversion to other forms of sexuality such as same-sex relations. My main argument is that in most African countries, and specifically in Cameroon, both the edification of a phallocratico-patriarchal society and the political invention of the sublimated Muntu, the so-called libidinal African straight, went along with the suppression, annihilation or negation of gays and lesbians, generally misrepresented as deracinated Africans and dangerous 'witch-others

Argument (complex analysis · Colonialism · Context (archaeology · Human sexuality · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · African history and culture studies · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · Gender Studies · History · Law

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