Decolonization, Feminisms and Queerness in African Contexts

Abstract

This text aims at presenting a first mapping of the field of queer and sexualities studies
in African contexts. Africa is becoming a laboratory of production of theoretical practices, in the field of feminism and sexual dissidence. We emphasize the production of a young African generation who questions sexual and gender norms in different African countries. From the theoretical point of view, we refer to the Queer African Reader (QAR), the first collection of papers from researchers and activists from different African countries, published in 2013, and to a second collection, Reclaiming Afrikan, published in 2014. The major contribution of these thinks consists in breaking with the image of a culturally homogeneous Africa, and from the point of view of sexual practices, putting against the wall both the representations of an obsessively homophobic Africa, perpetuated by LGBT global agendas, and of homosexuality as supposedly un-african, disseminated by nationalist discourses of local religious groups. O QAR represents a decolonized version of sexual dissidence, rethinking queer from the South.