Readings in Sexualities from Africa

Thomas Hendriks is Lecturer in African Anthropology at the University of Oxford and a postdoctoral research fellow at the KU Leuven University. He has been published in academic journals such as American Ethnologist, Sexualities and Journal of African Cultural Studies. Rachel Spronk is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. She is author of Ambiguous Pleasures: Sexuality and Middle Class Self-Perceptions in Nairobi.

Contents


Acknowledgements


Note on Sources


Introduction: Reading "sexualities" from "Africa" / Rachel Spronk and Thomas Hendriks


I. Representing "African" Sexualities


1. Is there a distinct African sexuality? A critical response to Caldwell / Beth Maina Ahlberg


2. Which bodies matter? Feminism, poststructuralism, race, and the curious theoretical odyssey of the "Hottentot Venus" / Zine Magubane


3. "Bisexuality" and the Politics of Normal in African Ethnography / Marc Epprecht


4. On Being Area-Studied: A Litany of Complaint / Keguro Macharia





II. Bio-Politics—Sexual Health


5. Dangerous Aphrodisiac, Restless Sexuality: Venereal Disease, Biomedicine, and Protectionism in Colonial Lagos, Nigeria / Saheed Aderinto


6. Irua Ria Atumia and Anti-Colonial Struggles among the Gikuyu of Kenya: A Counter Narrative on "Female Genital Mutilation" / Wairimu N. Njambi


7. "These Women, They Force Us to Rape Them": Rape as Narrative of Social Control in Post- Apartheid South Africa / Helen Moffett


8. "Transparent Sexualities": Sexual Openness, HIV Disclosure and the Governmentality of Sexuality in South Africa / Marian Burchardt





III. Same-Sex Practices—Gendered Identities


9. A Note on "Woman Marriage" in Dahomey / Melville J. Herskovits


10. Sexual Inversion Among the Azande / Edward E. Evans-Pritchard


11. "A Man is a Man Completely and a Wife is a Wife Completely": Gender Classification and Performance amongst "Ladies" and "Gents" in Ermelo, Mpumalanga'/ Graeme Reid


12. The Imagined Homoconference: "Activist-ism" and the Politics of Indirection, Serena Dankwa





IV. Love Transactions—Economies of Pleasure


13. The Materiality of Everyday Sex: Thinking beyond "Prostitution"/ Mark Hunter


14. On remuneration for homosexual practices in Bamako / Christophe Broqua


15. Belonging in Ethno-Erotic Economies: Adultery, Alterity, and Ritual in Postcolonial Kenya / George P. Meiu


16. The Pleasures of the City: Masculinity, Sexuality and Femininity in Dakar / Tshikala K. Biaya





V. Mobilizing Religion—Queering Tradition


17. Post-Colonial Histories of Sexuality: The Political Invention of a Libidinal African straight / Basile Ndjio


18. Homosexuality, Politics and Pentecostal Nationalism in Zambia / Adriaan van Klinken


19. "He Uses my Body": Female Traditional Healers, Male Ancestors and Transgender in South Africa / Cheryl Stobie


20. The sexual potentate. On sodomy, fellatio and other postcolonial privacies / Achille Mbembe





VI. Discrete Pleasures—Defiant Agencies


21. Sex Lives among Young People / Jomo Kenyatta


22. Eroticism, Sensuality and Women's Secrets among the Baganda / Sylvia Tamale


23. Sex, Food and Female Power: Discussion of Data Material from Northern Mozambique / Signe Arnfred


24. My Childhood as an Adult Molester / Zackie Achmat


List of Sources


List of Contributors


Index