Transafrica by Chantal Zabus
Transafrica explores this new lexical culture in cultural materials (novels, poetry, testimonies/life stories, interviews, film, visual art) in English, French, Arabic and other selected African languages, and the meanings which Africans have transnationally conferred upon “queer” and “transgender"—from North to South. Gender nonconformity and sexual dissidence on the African continent has produced a lexical culture at the crossroads of Western discourse and local African naming practices.
Transafrica is an unprecedented attempt at identifying the new vocabularies which queer and transgender Africans have used in the first two decades of the 21st century to refer to themselves and narrativize their desire, in the face of official narratives by medical doctors, and legal and religious authorities that have often been prioritized over a gender-variant (queer, trans, non-binary) individual’s lived experience, resulting in a systemic disempowerment.
Using case studies from Morocco, Egypt, Somalia, Nigeria, Uganda, Madagascar, Botswana, South Africa and more, Transafrica draws conclusions for a culture-specific and history-specific type of gender diversity outside of Western epistemic borders while confronting Euro-American models, thereby auguring a turn-of-the-third-millennium postqueer set of African open-ended identities.
Let us welcome this newest stake into the heart of that zombie idea, “homosexuality is un-African.” Pioneers of the study of literary representations of same-sex desire in Africa, Dunton and Zabus have brought together an always fascinating and sometimes fun collection of essays focused primarily on lexical cultures around the continent. How do Africans express sexual nuance or dissidence, or adapt meanings to French and English terms, in Arabic, Somali, Malagasy and other indigenous languages? From critical assessments of the proliferation of queer(ish) characters in literature, film and poetry by African creators, to close case studies of the cultural production of meanings, this is a wide-ranging and powerful intervention. And dire as the sexual rights situation may sometimes seem in much of Africa and indeed around this currently oft-demented world, the gist of the book and the works it considers is positive, verging on optimistic. * Marc Epprecht, Queen's University, Canada *
This original and agenda-setting anthology, assembled by two leading scholars of the literary and cultural representations of gender identity and sexual orientation in and of the African continent, showcases new and established voices in the field. While no single anthology could be exhaustive, this one provides fresh insights into what’s happening now and charts new courses for the future. * Neville Hoad, University of Texas at Austin, USA *
Chantal Zabus is Professor of Postcolonial and Gender Studies at the University Sorbonne Paris Nord, France. She is the author of Out in Africa (2014) and Between Rites and Rights (2007; 2016). She is the Editor-in-Chief of Postcolonial Text.
Chris Dunton has worked at universities in Nigeria, Libya and South Africa, and was most recently Professor and Dean of Humanities at the National University of Lesotho, Lesotho. He is the author of e.g. Make Man Talk True: Nigerian Theatre in English since 1970 (1992); (with Mai Palmberg) Human Rights and Homosexuality (1996); Nigerian Theatre in English (1998). Dunton was the first Anglophone scholar to publish work on homosexualities in African literature.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781350400757 |
| ISBN 10 | 1350400750 |
| Title | Transafrica |
| Author | Chantal Zabus |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
| Year published | 2025-02-20 |
| Number of pages | 248 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |