Emerging research in African scholarship attests to how local identities may inflect and conflict with Western categories of ‘lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex’ (LGBTQI), which are increasingly circulating, adopted or reshaped by African activists ( Matebeni 2014 ). In some instances, local terms are themselves the subject of scrutiny and are likewise contested; they can be both stigmatising and/or empowering. The chapters in this section deal with two main identity cat-egories in very different ways: queer and MSM (men who have sex with men).
The latter, a public health and development intervention ( Reddy et al. 2009 ), ‘has gained firm recognition as being crucial to HIV/AIDS treatment campaigns in many African countries’ ( Ekine and Abbas 2013 : 42). In this volume, Abisola Balogun and Paul Bissell examine the experiences of men who have sex with men in Nigeria, in a deeply patriarchal, religious, and traditional context where male non-heterosexuality cannot publicly exist. They illustrate the instability of identity categories (homosexual, bisexual, and pansexual) when heteronormative cultural expectations are high.
In their respective chapters, Derrick Higginbotham and Jane Bennett inter-rogate the various usages of ‘queer’ as a category of analysis in South African literature. Both authors draw on intersectional readings of queer in various texts, covering race, racialisation, intimate bonds, and economics. Higginbotham’s use of queer as a verb symbolically shows the complexity of economic relationships between people. Located in a democratically transitioning South Africa, the two novels featured in Higginbotham’s analysis offer a glimpse into how queer can help readers see those marginalised on the bases of their economic standing. From these texts, Higginbotham frames queer subversively. In his reading, there are no boundaries, and queer goes beyond sex and gender conventions. Blackness in his view is also queered and so are heterosexuality, business relations, friendships, and camaraderie. While it may appear that everything is queer, and thus nothing is ( Sullivan 2003 ), this is not necessarily the case. Rather, Higginbotham deploys queer to understand ‘processes and structures of distancing’. Quite similarly, but from a feminist and critical whiteness lens, Jane Bennett’s approach to whiteness in a South African context troubles notions of race and ethnicity in its explora-tion of queer and white alignments. Whilst located initially in her subjectivity
82 Moving beyond and between identity categories
as a white South African scholar and activist, Bennett extends her critical read-ing of whiteness to analyse a selection of primarily African texts, readread-ing these alongside North American texts by African American women. Her interrogation of whiteness in multiple activist and intellectual spaces leads her to maintain that whiteness has resulted in divisions in queer spaces in South Africa. She positions this ‘division as catastrophe’, suggesting that whites cannot be queer in certain spaces. Bennett’s use of queer is a ‘doubling, a spiral-back-and-forth’ invested in calling for a more ‘rigorous analysis’ of queer by white people. Like Higginbo-tham, Bennett appeals for a queering of queer that pays attention to racial politics.
In the final chapter of this section (as discussed earlier), Balogun and Bissell ask how a context that has been open to sexual and gender diversity ( Amadi-ume 1987 ; Iyam 1996 ) has become so restrictive. MSM or non-heterosexual men whose masculinity is not hegemonic in Nigeria are questioned and challenged to
‘change’ so as to accommodate heteronormative sexuality and gender presenta-tion. To do this, many devise strategies to manage and negotiate their identities either through concealment, passing, or stigma management. Thus, in such a con-text, even the category MSM is constantly shifting.
These chapters proceed beyond the ‘LGBTI’ frame by exploring intersections between race, class, economics, culture, tradition, and desire with queerness. They name, develop, and expand on notions of queer that are not limited to sex and gen-der binaries. While there has been an increase in representation of queer figures, in the arts and popular culture, the interrogation of queer itself or queering queer has been minimal. Taking these three chapters together allows for a transnational-comparative analysis that queers identity categories, including queer. This is a critical and timely shift in theorising African queerness and (sexuality and gender) identity categories. In her provocative essay, Stella Nyanzi (2014 : 66) insists on a new reading and thinking of queer that goes beyond the straight|queer binary. She correctly and poignantly questions:
when firm boundaries are drawn between homosexuals and heterosexuals, isn’t this a simplistic restyling of essentialist schisms? Isn’t this another polarisation of binary oppositions – this time based on sexual orientation?
Where do bisexual people fit within the dual division between homosexuals and heterosexuals?
Nyanzi’s interrogations compel us to really reflect on and question the essence of queer in African contexts. It appears that up to now, queer has been deployed in its North American usage as what is at ‘odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant’ ( Halperin 2008 : 200). Applying this definition simply glides over and misrecognises processes of de-normalising that historically happened because of colonial conquests in Africa. As Abisola and Bissell note, what was normal in Nigeria has become taboo. Similarly, Bennett suggests that the whitening of gay and lesbian writing in South Africa, which she hesitates attaching to the cat-egory queer, has othered black experiences. In a related way, Higginbotham peels off the different layers that mask the complexity of queer in the South African
Moving beyond and between identity categories 83 context. The underlying and complex racial dynamics that have plagued South Africa, while the country has been seen as a champion for LGBTQI rights, requires extensive investigation. Both Higginbotham and Bennett direct readers towards a deeper analysis on queer solidarities along race, class, and gender lines. Undoubt-edly, as the chapters in this and the next section show, reading South Africa in isolation from the interlocking social forces of race, class, and gender will yield no results. Important transnational theorisation is urgent.
References
Amadiume, I. (1987) Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in African Soci-ety . Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books.
Ekine, S. and Abbas, H. (eds) (2013) Queer African Reader . Dakar, Nairobi and Oxford:
Pambazuka Press.
Halperin, D. (2008) ‘Queer Politics’. In Seidman, S. and Alexander, J.C. (eds) The New Social Theory Reader (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge, pp. 197–205.
Iyam, D.C. (1996) ‘“Full” Men and “Powerful” Women: The Reconstruction of Gender Status amongst the Biase of South-Eastern Nigeria’. Canadian Journal of African Stud-ies 30(3), 387–408.
Matebeni, Z. (ed) (2014) Reclaiming Afrikan: Queer Perspectives on Sexual and Gender Identities . Athlone: Modjaji Books.
Nyanzi, S. (2014) ‘Queering Queer Africa’. In Matebeni, Z. (Curator) Reclaiming Afri-kan: Queer Perspectives on Sexual and Gender Identities . Athlone: Modjaji Books, pp.
65–70.
Reddy, V., Sandfort, T. and Rispel, L. (eds) (2009) From Social Silence to Social Science:
Same-Sex Sexuality, HIV and AIDS in South Africa . Cape Town: HSRC Press.
Sullivan, N. (2003) A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory . New York: New York Uni-versity Press.