ABSTRACT
This chapter interrogates claims that same-sex sexualities are un-African by historicising the relationship between Christianity and African tradition. It traces the mobility of ‘Africa’ and ‘same-sex sexuality’ as transnational signifiers, and considers how the signifier Africa comes to be mobilised for political and ideological purposes in producing and challenging static notions of African identity. Discourses that same-sex sexualities are un-African are based on essentialist constructions of an authentic Africanness that claims custodianship of autochthonous myths of precolonial heteronormativity. This chapter uses four cultural texts as case studies to theorise these intersecting discourses: John Trengove’s two isiXhosa language films, Inxeba: The Wound (2017) and Ibhokwe: The Goat (2014), Masande Ntshanga’s novel The Reactive (2014), and Zukiswa Wanner’s novel Men of the South (2010).
