104 research outputs found
The Filmed Body as a Model of Understanding African Queer Lived Experiences
No full textIn Africa, a combination of cultural and religious practices, repressive laws instituted during the colonial period, and homophobic nationalisms have ensured that individuals who identify as queer experience their difference in private spaces and at the margins of societies. African people who identify as queer navigate different forms of social silence and this has an important impact on how they toggle between invisibility and visibility and ultimately how they experience embodiment and relationality. Given such a situation, Gibson Ncube explores queer lived experiences in Africa through the lens of the body in films. The body in films is a powerful model for understanding the complexities of identity, desire, and gender within diverse African communities. By examining how queer individuals navigate their physical selves in relation to societal norms, it is possible to gain insight into the intersectionality of gender, sexuality, and cultural contexts. Drawing mainly on the work Ncube did in the book Queer Bodies in African Films (2022), he contends that the filmed body as a model serves as a canvas upon which societal expectations and personal expressions of gender and sexual identities collide. By zooming in on the body, Ncube is interested in how the filmed queer body is invested with multiple and often intersecting discourses and narratives. It is inscribed with more than just desire, eroticism, and sexuality. It is as a disruptive figure whose materiality calls for a rethinking not just of how gender and sexual identities are performed and staged but also how they are constructed and embodied. Thus, considering the body as a model allows for a rich understanding of the multifaceted tapestry of queer lived experiences in Africa. Gibson Ncube lectures at Stellenbosch University (South Africa). He has held fellowships supported by the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, the National Humanities Center (USA) and Leeds University Centre for African Studies (UK). He is currently an AfOx Visiting Fellow at Oxford University. He has published widely in the fields of comparative literature, gender and queer studies as well as cultural studies. He co-convened the Queer African Studies Association (2020-2022) and was the 2021 Mary Kingsley Zochonis Distinguished Lecturer (African Studies Association, UK). He currently sits on the Editorial Boards of the following journals: Journal of Literary Studies, the Canadian Journal of African Studies, and the Nordic Journal of African Studies. He is currently the Assistant Editor of the South African Journal of African Languages and the French Book Review Editor for the Canadian Journal of African Studies
Queer, Christian and Afrikaans : the libidinal, sexuality and religion in Kanarie and Skeef
No full textCITATION: Ncube, G. 2023. Queer, Christian and Afrikaans : the libidinal, sexuality and religion in Kanarie and Skeef. Tydskrif Vir Letterkunde, 60(1):22-30, doi:10.17159/tl.v60i1.14054.The original publication is available at https://letterkunde.africaReligion is often viewed as incompatible with queer sexualities and genders. In the Afrikaans-speaking communities of South Africa, Calvinist doctrine and dogma have been used to marginalise and ostracise those sexual and gender identities that stray from the heteronormative scripts sanctioned by cultural and religious practices. In this article, I examine how the libidinal is central to the way in which queer and faith communities interact in Afrikaans-speaking communities in two films: Kanarie and Skeef. The two films represent different filmic genres with Kanarie a fictional feature film and Skeef being a documentary. The two films, despite their different genres, broach the difficulty of being queer and religious. At the same time, the films show that it is possible to rethink religions/faith communities. Such rethinking creates accommodative spaces within faith communities in a way in which queerness is not viewed as a deviance or an abomination. I read these Afrikaans-language films against the conceptualisation of the libidinal offered by Keguro Macharia together with the ideas of queer agency proposed by Adriaan van Klinken. This queer agency marks not just a transgression of heteronormative Christian norms but also engenders expansive ways of understanding human sexuality and gender identities.https://letterkunde.africa/article/view/14054Publisher's versio
Gender and naming practices, and the creation of a taxonomy of masculinities in the South African soap opera The Queen
No full textCITATION: Ncube, G. 2019. Gender and naming practices, and the creation of a taxonomy of masculinities in the South African soap opera The Queen. Nomina Africana: The Journal of African Onomastics, 33(1):1–8, doi:10.2989/NA.2019.33.1.1.1331.The original publication is available at https://www.nisc.co.zaThe field of scholarly inquiry lying at the intersection of onomastics and gender studies is one that is
under-researched. Seeking to contribute to emerging debates on how names and naming practices
shape the construction and perception of gender identities, this article examines the naming practices
in the soap opera The Queen, and how these help to understand different forms of masculinities.
By bringing onomastic and gender perspectives into the conversation, this article contends that
naming practices in The Queen are important signifying constructs that possess an elocutionary force
of validating and invalidating different expressions of masculinity. The taxonomy of masculinities
that The Queen proposes makes it possible to examine how certain masculinities are deemed more
masculine than others. The names of the characters, together with their corporeal deployment, allow
for a rethinking of what it means to be male or a man in post-apartheid South Africa.Publisher's versio
A Pan-African Exploration of Queer Embodiment in African Film: A Book Review of Gibson Ncube’s Queer Bodies in African Films (NISC, December 2022)
No full textGibson Ncube’s monograph produces a Pan-African archive of films that grapple with the specificities of queer embodiment in several regions on the African continent. Queer Bodies in African Films does important intra-continental theorising about what it means to be queer in Africa, or African and queer, in both North and sub-Saharan African contexts, with a corpus that maps filmed queer bodiesin selected Maghrebian (chapter one), Egyptian (chapter two), East African (chapter three), and South African films (chapter four). Throughout, Ncube centres the filmed queer body as a site where “multiple and often intersecting discourses and narratives” (Ncube 2022, p.2) contest for legitimacy within their given cultural milieus. In this frame, the author remains attentive to “how the touching of bodies and rubbing together of physical bodies produce feelings and affection and forge (dis)connections” (2). As Ncube avers, this kind of pan-African consideration of queerness is lacking in Queer African Studies, and the monograph provides a useful entry point for scholars looking to do similar intracontinental research
Abezimu/Badimo (ancestors) and copyright law: from the Decolonial Turn to the pluriversal author
No full text"A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Communism” is the sentence that opens Karl Marx's and Friedrich Engels' iconic text, The Communist Manifesto. Marx and Engels set out what was to become the primary program of action for all communist parties in Europe. The Communist Manifesto's cardinal observation was that Communism was an epochal inevitability, and that it was the task of all revolutionaries to ensure that conditions are befitting for a Communist reality. Although in a completely different context, this thesis accepts that the spectre that is currently haunting Africa and the Global South is that of Decoloniality and Decolonisation. This thesis studiedly perceives the #MustFall moment as one that presented South Africa with a Decolonial Turn – this is an epochal inevitability that seeks to complete the incomplete task of decolonising society. To respond to the Decolonial Turn, this thesis methodologically employs decolonial theory, Black consciousness philosophy and Black Marxism to study the essence of copyright law's authorship from the perspective of people on the other side of Western modernity. The basic contention of this thesis, and its original contribution to the corpus of literature as regards authorship in copyright, is that the logical aftermath of the Decolonial Turn leads to a “pluriversal author” – this is a type of author that is reflective of the pluriversal epistemic and ontological patterns of a decolonised world. This is a world where many worlds exist. One of those worlds is inhabited by people whose epistemic traditions suggest that an author in copyright is inclusive of “Abezimu/Badimo”, that is the non-human author who is represented in an onto-triadic edifice of Being; the living, the dead and the yet-to-be-born. The thesis that is defended in this doctoral project is that Abezimu/Badimo are an author in copyright, and that this ought to be accepted, embraced, and reflected in prevailing copyright law legislative frameworks
Of dirt, disinfection and purgation: Discursive construction of state violence in selected contemporary Zimbabwean literature
No full textThis paper examines post-independent Zimbabwean literary narratives which engage with how the ruling ZANU-PF government frames dissenting voices as constituting dirt, filth and undesirability. Making use of Achille Mbembe's postulations on the "vulgarity of power" and Kenneth W. Harrow's readings of the politics of dirt, the central thesis of this paper is that the troping of dirt and state sponsored violence are closely related to the themes of memory and belonging. Literary works by writers such as Chistopher Mlalazi, NoViolet Bulawayo and John Eppel become self-effacing speech acts that are involved in reimagining and revisioning our understanding of power dynamics and how this affects human and social experiences
Queer, Christian and Afrikaans: The libidinal, sexuality and religion in Kanarie and Skeef
No full textReligion is often viewed as incompatible with queer sexualities and genders. In the Afrikaans-speaking communities of South Africa, Calvinist doctrine and dogma have been used to marginalise and ostracise those sexual and gender identities that stray from the heteronormative scripts sanctioned by cultural and religious practices. In this article, I examine how the libidinal is central to the way in which queer and faith communities interact in Afrikaans-speaking communities in two films: Kanarie and Skeef. The two films represent different filmic genres with Kanarie a fictional feature film and Skeef being a documentary. The two films, despite their different genres, broach the difficulty of being queer and religious. At the same time, the films show that it is possible to rethink religions/faith communities. Such rethinking creates accommodative spaces within faith communities in a way in which queerness is not viewed as a deviance or an abomination. I read these Afrikaans-language films against the conceptualisation of the libidinal offered by Keguro Macharia together with the ideas of queer agency proposed by Adriaan van Klinken. This queer agency marks not just a transgression of heteronormative Christian norms but also engenders expansive ways of understanding human sexuality and gender identities
This is Improper and Irreligious: Navigation of Queer Sexuality, Religion, and Practice in Marwan Hamed’s Film Imarat Yácubyan and Abdellah Taïa’s Novel Une Mélancolie Arabe
No full textThis article examines the negotiation of queer sexuality in Arab-Muslim societies of North Africa. Through close analysis and reading of the film Imarat Yácubyan by Marwan Hamed (Egypt) and the novel Une Mélancolie Arabe by Abdellah Taïa (Morocco), this article examines how media makes it possible to understand how Muslims in North Africa negotiate their sexuality, religion, and practice against backgrounds in which queerness exists in silence and marginality. The selected film and novel demonstrate that Islam is, in fact, a sensuous and queer religion. Designating Islam as queer gestures towards the possibility of imagining non-normative sexualities exiting within and being compatible with the religion. In their different iterations of the intersection of queerness and the practice of Islam, Imarat Yácubyan and Une Mélancolie Arabe open new spaces for understanding Islam and, specifically, what it means to be queer, Arab, and Muslim within the sociocultural context of North African countries
‘Guilty Pleasures’, ‘Forbidden Fruits’ and ‘Brave Confusion’: Queer Love in the Music and Videos of South African Singers Toya Delazy and Nakhane Touré
No full textGuided by socio-musicological perspectives, this article contends that Toya Delazy and Nakhane Touré grapple with issues pertaining to love and sexuality in their music. This is against the background of South Africa being hailed as a progressive country, especially relating to its constitution that acquiescently protects the rights of sexual minorities. Notwithstanding such constitutional protections, lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders (LGBT) continue to be victimised particularly in the impoverished townships of this country. Although they celebrate same-sex love, this article contends that such celebration is based on guilt and shame. Singing against such guilt and shame is a significant element in the construction of their sexual identity and acceptation of their same-sex love. The article concludes that Toya Delazy and Nakhane Touré’s songs are pioneering in South Africa for their open depiction of queer love in a socio-cultural milieu that considers such identities and modes of self-expression as unnatural, deviant and taboo. This music can thus be considered as a transgressive space that seeks to rehabilitate the manner in which same-sex love is perceived.</jats:p
SOUTH AFRICA AND THE DREAM OF LOVE TO COME: QUEER SEXUALITY AND THE STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM.
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