“Un-silencing queer Nigeria”: Representations of queerness in contemporary Nigerian fiction
- Authors: Akram, Tahzeeb
- Date: 2021-10-29
- Subjects: Heterosexism in literature , Patriarchy in literature , Homophobia in literature , Sexual minorities in literature , Nigerian literature 21st century History and criticism , Queer theory Nigeria , Gender identity Law and legislation Nigeria , Gender identity Religious aspects , Sexual minorities Nigeria Social conditions , Nigeria. Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act, 2013
- Language: English
- Type: Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/190668 , vital:45016
- Description: This thesis analyses contemporary queer Nigerian fiction, particularly queer representations regarding law, religion and culture in Nigeria’s heteropatriarchal and queerphobic society. I explore a number of authors’ use of different literary forms and platforms to promote and represent non-conforming genders and sexualities in queerphobic Nigeria. These narratives show queer people navigating the heteronormative society vis-à-vis marriage, family, intimacy, work, violence and rights activism. I draw on Western and African gender and queer theories for the concepts, definitions and critical terminologies used in this thesis. African queer theorists and activists are highlighted for their reclaiming queer history from among the early records in Africa as well as contemporary queer Nigerian literature and activism. Religion and queerness are crucial themes in Chinelo Okparanta’s same sex women’s novel, Under the Udala Trees. Using queer African Christian theology against Nigeria’s conservative socio-religious setting, I demonstrate that queerness is not a threat to Nigerian’s Christian faith, and that mutual coexistence of queer sexuality and Christianity advances queer rights in that society. Nnanna Ikpo’s Fimí Sílẹ̀ Forever: Heaven gave it to me’s problematises heteronormative masculinities and the manufacturing of heteropatriarchy and queer masculinities in Nigeria. I examine the protagonists who are both victims of and perpetrators in their queerphobic society. The socio-legal focus I employ examines the impact of the 2014 Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act on Nigeria’s already marginalised and oppressed queer community. There are vast opportunities for queer Nigerian artists to create, publish and promote queer identities in the safe and enabling space of online platforms via physical distancing between the queer community and the queerphobic society. From the digitally published 14: An Anthology of Queer Art’s two volumes, five short stories are analysed regarding different forms of intimacies in queer men’s relationships. These queer contemporary fiction writers offer complex representations of queerness within Nigeria’s heteropatriarchal and queerphobic society that polices non-normative bodies through religion, culture and the law. Such literary texts, digital literary platforms and activism vitally provide queer Nigerians a progressive space to assert queer presence, voices lives and rights to educating and re-socialising their society towards humaneness. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Literary Studies in English, 2021
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021-10-29
- Authors: Akram, Tahzeeb
- Date: 2021-10-29
- Subjects: Heterosexism in literature , Patriarchy in literature , Homophobia in literature , Sexual minorities in literature , Nigerian literature 21st century History and criticism , Queer theory Nigeria , Gender identity Law and legislation Nigeria , Gender identity Religious aspects , Sexual minorities Nigeria Social conditions , Nigeria. Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act, 2013
- Language: English
- Type: Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/190668 , vital:45016
- Description: This thesis analyses contemporary queer Nigerian fiction, particularly queer representations regarding law, religion and culture in Nigeria’s heteropatriarchal and queerphobic society. I explore a number of authors’ use of different literary forms and platforms to promote and represent non-conforming genders and sexualities in queerphobic Nigeria. These narratives show queer people navigating the heteronormative society vis-à-vis marriage, family, intimacy, work, violence and rights activism. I draw on Western and African gender and queer theories for the concepts, definitions and critical terminologies used in this thesis. African queer theorists and activists are highlighted for their reclaiming queer history from among the early records in Africa as well as contemporary queer Nigerian literature and activism. Religion and queerness are crucial themes in Chinelo Okparanta’s same sex women’s novel, Under the Udala Trees. Using queer African Christian theology against Nigeria’s conservative socio-religious setting, I demonstrate that queerness is not a threat to Nigerian’s Christian faith, and that mutual coexistence of queer sexuality and Christianity advances queer rights in that society. Nnanna Ikpo’s Fimí Sílẹ̀ Forever: Heaven gave it to me’s problematises heteronormative masculinities and the manufacturing of heteropatriarchy and queer masculinities in Nigeria. I examine the protagonists who are both victims of and perpetrators in their queerphobic society. The socio-legal focus I employ examines the impact of the 2014 Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act on Nigeria’s already marginalised and oppressed queer community. There are vast opportunities for queer Nigerian artists to create, publish and promote queer identities in the safe and enabling space of online platforms via physical distancing between the queer community and the queerphobic society. From the digitally published 14: An Anthology of Queer Art’s two volumes, five short stories are analysed regarding different forms of intimacies in queer men’s relationships. These queer contemporary fiction writers offer complex representations of queerness within Nigeria’s heteropatriarchal and queerphobic society that polices non-normative bodies through religion, culture and the law. Such literary texts, digital literary platforms and activism vitally provide queer Nigerians a progressive space to assert queer presence, voices lives and rights to educating and re-socialising their society towards humaneness. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Literary Studies in English, 2021
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021-10-29
Journeying home, exile and transnationalism in Noni Jabavu and Sisonke Msimang’s memoirs
- Authors: Masola, Athambile
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Home in literature , Exile (Punishment) in literature , Women authors, Black -- South Africa -- History and criticism , Jabavu, Noni -- Criticism and interpretation , Msimang, Sisonke -- Criticism and interpretation
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/166529 , vital:41376
- Description: This thesis examines the memoirs of two South Africa female writers: Noni Jabavu and Sisonke Msimang. In analysing their memoirs, this thesis sets out to contribute to the scholarship which centres the voices of Black women writers. It explores how both writers interrogate the concepts of home, exile and transnationalism. My focus is on the ways in which the writers theorise questions of belonging, and the extent to which their writing provides the opportunity to give voice to the complex nature of belonging. I read the narratives from these two writers alongside each other, as Noni Jabavu is Sisonke Msimang’s literary ancestor. By looking at their works alongside each other, this thesis becomes an intergenerational conversation between the past and the present. Using Black feminist thought and migratory subjectivity, this thesis examines the ways in which these writers connect the personal and the political. Noni and Sisonke navigate the private spaces of home in conversation with the political experience of exile and the nation. In the second chapter, I explore home as ekhaya, isizwe and an imaginary homeland. Ekhaya is the isiXhosa word denoting the family home, where there is a network of family rather than a nuclear family. Home is also isizwe: the isiXhosa word which evokes the nation state, which takes on layered meanings in the context of colonialism and apartheid. Home can also be an imaginary homeland, which is an imagined version of home after a long absence such as exile. In the third chapter, I examine three forms of exile: internal exile, estrangement and political exile. Finally, in chapter four, I analyse transnationalism: a border-crossing which raises questions of power, mobility and kinship. Looking at home, exile and transnationalism together allows for an exploration which challenges taken-for-granted ideas about place and identity. These memoirs illuminate the ways in which Black women constitute and reconstitute their identities according to the places which they access through travel.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Masola, Athambile
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Home in literature , Exile (Punishment) in literature , Women authors, Black -- South Africa -- History and criticism , Jabavu, Noni -- Criticism and interpretation , Msimang, Sisonke -- Criticism and interpretation
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/166529 , vital:41376
- Description: This thesis examines the memoirs of two South Africa female writers: Noni Jabavu and Sisonke Msimang. In analysing their memoirs, this thesis sets out to contribute to the scholarship which centres the voices of Black women writers. It explores how both writers interrogate the concepts of home, exile and transnationalism. My focus is on the ways in which the writers theorise questions of belonging, and the extent to which their writing provides the opportunity to give voice to the complex nature of belonging. I read the narratives from these two writers alongside each other, as Noni Jabavu is Sisonke Msimang’s literary ancestor. By looking at their works alongside each other, this thesis becomes an intergenerational conversation between the past and the present. Using Black feminist thought and migratory subjectivity, this thesis examines the ways in which these writers connect the personal and the political. Noni and Sisonke navigate the private spaces of home in conversation with the political experience of exile and the nation. In the second chapter, I explore home as ekhaya, isizwe and an imaginary homeland. Ekhaya is the isiXhosa word denoting the family home, where there is a network of family rather than a nuclear family. Home is also isizwe: the isiXhosa word which evokes the nation state, which takes on layered meanings in the context of colonialism and apartheid. Home can also be an imaginary homeland, which is an imagined version of home after a long absence such as exile. In the third chapter, I examine three forms of exile: internal exile, estrangement and political exile. Finally, in chapter four, I analyse transnationalism: a border-crossing which raises questions of power, mobility and kinship. Looking at home, exile and transnationalism together allows for an exploration which challenges taken-for-granted ideas about place and identity. These memoirs illuminate the ways in which Black women constitute and reconstitute their identities according to the places which they access through travel.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
Resisting the ‘Native Informant’ trope in examples of African Diaspora art and literature
- Authors: Nuen, Tinika
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/131657 , vital:36708
- Description: This thesis draws attention to the existence of the ‘native informant’ trope in the African Diaspora. It argues that a strong emphasis towards studying diasporic groups in relation to their African origin revives, consequently, the colonial politics that underpin the continent as an unknown mythical place. In response to this issue, I introduce multidisciplinary case studies that highlight various artists and authors who resist and challenge the diasporic individual as the ‘native informant’. Their works reinterpret and redefine the relationship between African communities, their connection to the continent and their experiences of living abroad. Analysing the exhibitions Looking Both Ways, Africa Remix and Flow, I investigate their visual art discourses that interpret diasporic artists and their works as cultural embodiments of their African background. As a result, the three art shows marginalise other potential readings to view diasporic experiences. This thesis introduces three resistant themes that reconceive the diasporic person’s relationship to the African Diaspora based on language, spatial interaction and self-identification opposed to a geographic tie. The first theme (language) references Victor Ekpuk’s drawings and Isidore Okpewho’s novel Call Me By My Rightful Name to suggest a language based diasporic experience. The second theme (spatial interaction) looks at Emeka Ogboh’s sound installations and Teju Cole’s novel Open City. Both works examine a diasporic individual’s conflicted engagement with her place of origin. The third theme (self-identification) considers the individual-community relationship in Wura-Natasha Ogunji’s performance art and Chika Unigwe’s novel On Black Sisters’ Street. Each of these visual-literary pairs focus on various components that shape the African diasporic lifestyle. My research re-interprets the continent’s significance in the diaspora from a geographic construct to a socio-spiritual connection to a community. Firstly, it outlines the persistent issue of a colonial residue in Africa’s definition as a physical-cultural space, and secondly, it offers three alternative discourses to read diasporic identities outside a geographic framework. I argue that belonging is a social individual-collective effort rather than an anchor to a tangible environment.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Nuen, Tinika
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/131657 , vital:36708
- Description: This thesis draws attention to the existence of the ‘native informant’ trope in the African Diaspora. It argues that a strong emphasis towards studying diasporic groups in relation to their African origin revives, consequently, the colonial politics that underpin the continent as an unknown mythical place. In response to this issue, I introduce multidisciplinary case studies that highlight various artists and authors who resist and challenge the diasporic individual as the ‘native informant’. Their works reinterpret and redefine the relationship between African communities, their connection to the continent and their experiences of living abroad. Analysing the exhibitions Looking Both Ways, Africa Remix and Flow, I investigate their visual art discourses that interpret diasporic artists and their works as cultural embodiments of their African background. As a result, the three art shows marginalise other potential readings to view diasporic experiences. This thesis introduces three resistant themes that reconceive the diasporic person’s relationship to the African Diaspora based on language, spatial interaction and self-identification opposed to a geographic tie. The first theme (language) references Victor Ekpuk’s drawings and Isidore Okpewho’s novel Call Me By My Rightful Name to suggest a language based diasporic experience. The second theme (spatial interaction) looks at Emeka Ogboh’s sound installations and Teju Cole’s novel Open City. Both works examine a diasporic individual’s conflicted engagement with her place of origin. The third theme (self-identification) considers the individual-community relationship in Wura-Natasha Ogunji’s performance art and Chika Unigwe’s novel On Black Sisters’ Street. Each of these visual-literary pairs focus on various components that shape the African diasporic lifestyle. My research re-interprets the continent’s significance in the diaspora from a geographic construct to a socio-spiritual connection to a community. Firstly, it outlines the persistent issue of a colonial residue in Africa’s definition as a physical-cultural space, and secondly, it offers three alternative discourses to read diasporic identities outside a geographic framework. I argue that belonging is a social individual-collective effort rather than an anchor to a tangible environment.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
Intersectionality and complexity in the representation of ‘queer’ sexualities and genders in African women’s short fiction
- Authors: Du Preez, Jenny Boźena
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Sexual minority culture , Sexual minorities' writings , African fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism , Gender identity in literature , Short stories, South African , Feminism in literature , Political poetry , Eroticism in literature , Lesbianism in literature
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/119047 , vital:34697
- Description: This thesis sets out to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about queer sexualities and genders in Africa by examining their depiction in selected post-2000 African women’s short fiction written in English. Post-2000, the short story form has become the primary vehicle for queer representations by African women writers, and is thus an important development in the burgeoning body of queer literature by African writers. Broadly speaking, this literary formation can be defined as anti-homophobic, feminist and politically pragmatic. Using an intersectional lens, this thesis sets out to examine four significant strands in the political work these stories engage in. The chapters are structured around four main points of contention that have particular significance at the intersection of ‘queer’, ‘women’ and ‘Africa’. Firstly, I examine South African short stories that perform what I call queer conversations with history: imaginatively asserting a queer South African history, writing back against a male-dominated and heterosexist literary canon and, in doing so, contributing to the reimagination of the contemporary South African nation. Secondly, I analyse short stories from Africa that foreground the family, both as social formation and ideology. I examine how these stories ‘fracture’ this powerful and naturalised heterosexist concept by depicting the tensions and contradictions that queer characters experience in relation to family. Thirdly, I consider short stories from various African contexts that work to reconceptualise queer sexuality in relation to religious discourse in order to challenge homophobic and patriarchal religious authority. Finally, I examine queer, feminist erotic short stories by African women writers that challenges various colonialist, racist, sexist and lesbophobic discourses that have historically stifled the portrayal of sex and erotic experience between women.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
- Authors: Du Preez, Jenny Boźena
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Sexual minority culture , Sexual minorities' writings , African fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism , Gender identity in literature , Short stories, South African , Feminism in literature , Political poetry , Eroticism in literature , Lesbianism in literature
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/119047 , vital:34697
- Description: This thesis sets out to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about queer sexualities and genders in Africa by examining their depiction in selected post-2000 African women’s short fiction written in English. Post-2000, the short story form has become the primary vehicle for queer representations by African women writers, and is thus an important development in the burgeoning body of queer literature by African writers. Broadly speaking, this literary formation can be defined as anti-homophobic, feminist and politically pragmatic. Using an intersectional lens, this thesis sets out to examine four significant strands in the political work these stories engage in. The chapters are structured around four main points of contention that have particular significance at the intersection of ‘queer’, ‘women’ and ‘Africa’. Firstly, I examine South African short stories that perform what I call queer conversations with history: imaginatively asserting a queer South African history, writing back against a male-dominated and heterosexist literary canon and, in doing so, contributing to the reimagination of the contemporary South African nation. Secondly, I analyse short stories from Africa that foreground the family, both as social formation and ideology. I examine how these stories ‘fracture’ this powerful and naturalised heterosexist concept by depicting the tensions and contradictions that queer characters experience in relation to family. Thirdly, I consider short stories from various African contexts that work to reconceptualise queer sexuality in relation to religious discourse in order to challenge homophobic and patriarchal religious authority. Finally, I examine queer, feminist erotic short stories by African women writers that challenges various colonialist, racist, sexist and lesbophobic discourses that have historically stifled the portrayal of sex and erotic experience between women.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
‘Jujutech’: exploring cultural and epistemological hybridity in African science fiction
- Authors: Stier, Jordan Daniel
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Science fiction, African -- History and criticism , Tutuola, Amos. The palm-wine drunkard , Mkize, Loyiso, 1987- .Kwezi , Black Panther (Comic book) , Dila, Dilman, 1977-. A killing in the sun , Superheroes, Black , Mbvundula, Ekari. Montague's last
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/96908 , vital:31346
- Description: This thesis aims to respond to the rise in the production of science fiction in Africa over the last decade, and to show how what I describe as the juju orientation of many of these works does not disqualify them from the genre of science fiction. Rather, I advocate for the recognition of juju ontologies as genuine sources of knowledge about the world, which have been overlooked by the globally dominant scientism that has informed science fiction theorisation to date. In my introduction I outline the theoretical frameworks of juju, science fiction and epistemology with which the thesis is in communication. In my second chapter I re-read Amos Tutuola’s novel The Palm-Wine Drinkard, showing the inherently science fictional structure of the juju-based storytelling that characterises colonial and pre-colonial African literature, as well as the essentiality of science fictional modes to Tutuola’s own prose. My third chapter considers Ian MacDonald’s theorisation of a jujutech aesthetic in African science fiction, wherein the speculations of the genres are rooted in both technoscientific and juju ontologies simultaneously. I account for the role this literary aesthetic plays in Ekari Mbvundula’s “Montague’s Last” to blur the divisions of worldly knowledge enforced by global epistemological inequalities, before showing how Dilman Dila’s A Killing in the Sun presents a critically frontier African epistemology in literary practice, and the value thereof. My fourth chapter considers the role of popular culture and consumption, and how the global literary industry resists juju-based texts. I conclude that juju-based nova and the jujutech aesthetic are not only essentially science fictional literary modes, but important players in science fiction’s role in being epistemologically productive in the future.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
- Authors: Stier, Jordan Daniel
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Science fiction, African -- History and criticism , Tutuola, Amos. The palm-wine drunkard , Mkize, Loyiso, 1987- .Kwezi , Black Panther (Comic book) , Dila, Dilman, 1977-. A killing in the sun , Superheroes, Black , Mbvundula, Ekari. Montague's last
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/96908 , vital:31346
- Description: This thesis aims to respond to the rise in the production of science fiction in Africa over the last decade, and to show how what I describe as the juju orientation of many of these works does not disqualify them from the genre of science fiction. Rather, I advocate for the recognition of juju ontologies as genuine sources of knowledge about the world, which have been overlooked by the globally dominant scientism that has informed science fiction theorisation to date. In my introduction I outline the theoretical frameworks of juju, science fiction and epistemology with which the thesis is in communication. In my second chapter I re-read Amos Tutuola’s novel The Palm-Wine Drinkard, showing the inherently science fictional structure of the juju-based storytelling that characterises colonial and pre-colonial African literature, as well as the essentiality of science fictional modes to Tutuola’s own prose. My third chapter considers Ian MacDonald’s theorisation of a jujutech aesthetic in African science fiction, wherein the speculations of the genres are rooted in both technoscientific and juju ontologies simultaneously. I account for the role this literary aesthetic plays in Ekari Mbvundula’s “Montague’s Last” to blur the divisions of worldly knowledge enforced by global epistemological inequalities, before showing how Dilman Dila’s A Killing in the Sun presents a critically frontier African epistemology in literary practice, and the value thereof. My fourth chapter considers the role of popular culture and consumption, and how the global literary industry resists juju-based texts. I conclude that juju-based nova and the jujutech aesthetic are not only essentially science fictional literary modes, but important players in science fiction’s role in being epistemologically productive in the future.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
“New ways of telling”: African textual forms and dissemination in the age of digital media
- Authors: Friedemann, Oriole Megan
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Digital media -- Africa , Self-publishing -- Africa , African literature , Literature publishing -- Technological innovations , Blog authorship -- Africa , African Storybook Reader , FunDza Literacy Project , Long Story SHORT
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/115105 , vital:34078
- Description: In the age of digital media, creators are using the versatile nature of information and communication technologies and the ubiquity of the web to publish and distribute texts, circumventing traditional gatekeepers such as publishing institutions. In Africa, where web access and digitisation are relatively new, storytellers are eagerly exploring new mediums and the possibilities that they provide for African narratives and African representation. This thesis looks at the digital platforms of the African Storybook Reader, the FunDza Literacy Project, and Long Story SHORT, as well as Dudu Busani-Dube’s novel Hlomu the Wife, which first gained popularity on a blog platform. It examines three different web series, An African City, The Foxy Five, and Tuko Macho, as well as a transmedia documentary, Love Radio. The texts are grouped into literatures disseminated from digital platforms, localised narratives that explore the urban African woman, and narratives that make use of participatory culture. These are texts that make use of digital tools and platforms to create and disseminate African stories, making diverse and indigenous narratives more easily accessible to both local and global audiences. This thesis argues that digitisation and the global nature of the internet have created opportunities for Africans to become producers and exporters of indigenous information and representation, rather than passive consumers of imported knowledge, or subjects of external characterisation.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
- Authors: Friedemann, Oriole Megan
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Digital media -- Africa , Self-publishing -- Africa , African literature , Literature publishing -- Technological innovations , Blog authorship -- Africa , African Storybook Reader , FunDza Literacy Project , Long Story SHORT
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/115105 , vital:34078
- Description: In the age of digital media, creators are using the versatile nature of information and communication technologies and the ubiquity of the web to publish and distribute texts, circumventing traditional gatekeepers such as publishing institutions. In Africa, where web access and digitisation are relatively new, storytellers are eagerly exploring new mediums and the possibilities that they provide for African narratives and African representation. This thesis looks at the digital platforms of the African Storybook Reader, the FunDza Literacy Project, and Long Story SHORT, as well as Dudu Busani-Dube’s novel Hlomu the Wife, which first gained popularity on a blog platform. It examines three different web series, An African City, The Foxy Five, and Tuko Macho, as well as a transmedia documentary, Love Radio. The texts are grouped into literatures disseminated from digital platforms, localised narratives that explore the urban African woman, and narratives that make use of participatory culture. These are texts that make use of digital tools and platforms to create and disseminate African stories, making diverse and indigenous narratives more easily accessible to both local and global audiences. This thesis argues that digitisation and the global nature of the internet have created opportunities for Africans to become producers and exporters of indigenous information and representation, rather than passive consumers of imported knowledge, or subjects of external characterisation.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
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