Sexualities, Political Orders and Revolutions in Africa

Abstract

Abstract

This project proposes to investigate histories and politics of sexuality in three African coun- tries (Tunisia, Ethiopia, Sudan), which recently experienced political transformations, in order to shed light on glob(c)al and historical forms of unequal relations. In 2011, Tunisians took to the streets what sparked social movements and protests in other parts of North Africa and the Middle East in what was dubbed as the “Arab Spring”. The #OromoProtest (2014-16) in Ethiopia led to a political transformation in 2017/8, a development of great significance in shaping the course of events in the horn region of Africa. In December 2018/9, Sudanese popular protests led to the ousting of Omar al Bashir who had been in power for three decades. If, akin to Walter Benjamin (1968), moments of danger are those that blast “out of the continuum of the historic process”,1 these political developments were indeed moments of danger that disrupted continuities in authori- tarian grip on power and laid bare the problematics of historicist (pre)dispositions. Just as they
1 Quoted were moments of danger for the oppressors, they could be viewed as “moments of hope” replete with possibilities for the oppressed to shake the roots of their longstanding subordination. With this in mind, the current project asks if and what possibilities these moments have created for sexual minorities and what we might learn about broader socio-political orders, histories and forms of in- equalities in a rapidly globalizing world in which Africa has a complicated “place”. I use sexual mi- norities to refer to those whose practices, experiences and identities/subjectivities do not conform to heteronormative/heterosexual ways of being and living. As such, sexuality is proposed to inter- rogate multiple forms of socio-political and historico-global relations from an Africanist vantage point. In so doing, the project is an effort to delve into interdependences and (in)commensurabili- ties in order to propose ways of reconfiguring African Studies.