Publications and Research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Fall 2020
Abstract
This essay examines the media coverage surrounding two African weddings of lesbian and gay couples in South Africa, as a lens onto the evolving cultural politics of black queerness in that country. Two decades after South Africa launched a world-leading legal framework for LGBTI protections, I argue that these media representations depict the growing inclusion of black LGBTIQ people as a process of bridging the supposed “gap” between homosexuality and African culture. This new “bridging the gap” script seemingly rejects the older, dominant script portraying homosexuality as intrinsically “un-African.” But I argue that it instead reproduces the “un-African” script in a new, liberal guise, offering inclusion to black LGBTIQ South Africans on limited terms that continue to obscure their embeddedness within African histories and communities.
Included in
African Languages and Societies Commons, Family, Life Course, and Society Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, Sociology of Culture Commons
Comments
This is the author's accepted manuscript of a work originally published in Africa Today, available at https://www.doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.67.1.04.
For all my publications, please visit my personal website at https://michaelyarbrough.net or my ORCID at https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2802-3365.