A “Vortex of Identities”: Freemasonry, Witchcraft, and Postcolonial Homophobia

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Geschiere
Keyword(s):  
Queer Studies ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
African Studies ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
The West ◽  
Secret Societies ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Anal Penetration ◽  
Sex Practices

Abstract:The recent moral panic in Cameroon about a supposed proliferation of “homosexuality” is related to a special image of “the” homosexual as un Grand who submits younger persons, eager to get a job, to anal penetration, and are thus corrupting the nation. This image stems from the popular conviction that the national elite is deeply involved in secret societies like Freemasonry or Rosicrucianism. The tendency to thus relate the supposed proliferation of homosexuality in the postcolony to colonial impositions is balanced by other lines in its genealogy—for instance, the notion of “wealth medicine,” which Günther Tessmann, the German ethnographer of the Fang, linked already in 1913 to same-sex intercourse. This complex knot of ideas and practices coming from different backgrounds can help us explore the urgent challenges that same-sex practices raise to African studies in general. The Cameroonian examples confuse current Western notions about heteronormativity, GLBTQI+ identities, and the relation between gender and sex. Taking everyday assemblages emerging from African contexts as our starting point can help not only to queer African studies, but also to Africanize queer studies. It can also help to overcome unproductive tendencies to oppose Western/colonial and local/ traditional elements. Present-day notions and practices of homosexuality and homophobia are products of long and tortuous histories at the interface of Africa and the West.

scholarly journals Anusocratie? Freemasonry, sexual transgression and illicit enrichment in postcolonial Africa

Africa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 90 (5) ◽  
pp. 831-851
Author(s):  
Peter Geschiere ◽  
Rogers Orock
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Sexual Diversity ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Sexual Transgression ◽  
Postcolonial Africa ◽  
Anal Penetration ◽  
Sex Practices

AbstractCameroonians recently invented a new word to characterize the state of their country: anusocratie (the rule of the anus). This became central in the moral panic from 2000 onwards over a supposed proliferation of homosexuality. Anusocratie links such same-sex practices to illicit enrichment by the national elites and their involvement with secret associations of Western provenance, such as Freemasonry, Rosicrucians and the Illuminati. This article tries to unravel this conceptual knot of homosexuality, the occult (Freemasonry) and illicit enrichment: first, by historicizing it. Of interest in the Cameroonian case is the fact that a similar link is mentioned in one of the first ethnographies, Günther Tessmann's Die Pangwe. Freemasonry is clearly a colonial imposition on the country, but the link between same-sex practices and enrichment has a longer history. Second, a comparison with similar ideas elsewhere on the continent can also open up wider perspectives. The link with illicit enrichment does not figure in classical conceptions of ‘homosexuality’ as developed in Europe, yet it strongly emerges from examples from all over Africa. Both Achille Mbembe and Joseph Tonda show that this image of the anus – anal penetration – articulates popular concerns about staggering inequalities. Yet, this aspect is ignored in debates about growing ‘homophobia’ in Africa. A confrontation with classical texts from Western queer theory (Bersani, Mieli) can help us discover other layers in African discourses, notably an emphasis on sexual diversity as an answer to homophobia. It can also serve to relativize the linking of sexual practices to sexual identities, which is still seen as self-evident in much queer theory of Western provenance.

ENDRE STIANSEN AND MICHAEL KEVANE, ED., Kordofan Invaded: Peripheral Incorporation and Social Transformation in Islamic Africa (Boston: Brill, 1998). Pp. 319. $94 cloth.

2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 290-292
Author(s):  
Richard Lobban
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
African Studies ◽  
The West ◽  
Protracted Conflict ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Peripheral Area ◽  
History Of ◽  
Eastern Sudan

The history of Sudan still reflects the country's struggle to find its identity between Middle Eastern and African studies. Even within Sudan, there are spheres of interest ranging from the expanding ancient studies of Nubia to the protracted conflict between so-called Afro-Arab northerners and Nilotic southerners. Lost in these expanding domains are the histories of eastern Sudan and Kordofan to the west. Even the historiography of Sennar and Darfur is far better established than that of Kordofan. Thus, the very title of the book being reviewed suggests that Kordofan is an “invaded” and “peripheral” area on the edge of the Islamic and African worlds. Thus, this work is a welcome starting point in filling in this considerable gap in Sudan studies. Stiansen and Kevane have done noble service in this respect.

Beneath Improvisation

2019 ◽  
pp. 759-780
Author(s):  
Vijay Iyer
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Black Studies ◽  
Queer Studies ◽  
Traditional Music ◽  
Institutional Racism ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
The West ◽  
Subaltern Studies ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Critical Model

Improvisation has been construed as Western art music’s Other. This chapter urges music theorists to take the consequences of this configuration seriously. The decision to exclude improvisation as inherently unstable is not neutral, but is bound up with the endemic racism that has characterized social relations in the West and that is being brought to the fore in Black Lives Matter and other recent social and political movements. Traditional music theory is not immune from such institutional racism—its insistence on normative musical behaviors is founded on the (white) phallogocentrism of Western thought. Does the resurgent academic interest in improvisation offer a way out? No, at least not as it is currently studied. Even an apparently impartial approach such as cognitive science is not neutral; perception is colored by race. To get anywhere, this chapter argues, improvisation studies must take difference seriously. Important impetus for a more inclusive critical model comes from such fields as Black studies, Women’s studies, subaltern studies, queer studies, and disability studies.

scholarly journals ‘Erotiques Cannibales’: A Queer Ontological Take on Desire from Urban Congo

Sexualities ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 853-867 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Hendriks
Keyword(s):  
Queer Studies ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Ontological Turn

This article illustrates the theoretical productivity of the recent ontological turn in anthropology as a way to further ‘anthropologize’ queer studies by taking seriously erotic alterity as an ethnographic situation that unlocks possibilities for radically re-thinking desire beyond the limiting framework of ‘sexuality’. It proposes a thought experiment with the specific ways in which same-sex loving men and boys in contemporary urban Congo conceptualize desire as a self-affirming predatory force that joyfully queers the ‘normal’ world. Rather than ethnographically representing ‘their’ erotic concepts, this article tries to think through them and calls for a non-melancholic theorization of desire.

scholarly journals ‘I realised then how “Parisian” Egypt was’: challenges and rewards of de-westernising travel journalism

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (8) ◽  
pp. 1151-1166
Author(s):  
Andrew Duffy
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
The West ◽  
Travel And Tourism ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Newspaper Articles

Bypassing the dominant Western bias in journalism scholarship is a challenge; it raises the question of what might replace it. Similarly, to evade the Western post-imperialism orthodoxies recurrent in cultural studies scholarship into travel and tourism would require other perspectives. This study combines the two and attempts to circumvent the Western bias in scholarship on travel journalism, given that its constituent parts are – for different reasons – becoming de-centred from the West. Textual analysis of Singaporean newspaper articles in Mandarin and English shows that questions of privilege and power remain but need not be associated with narratives of post-imperialism. Instead, destinations are textually constructed to justify the writer’s decision to travel. The intention for this article is to suggest ways that dominant Western perspectives in media studies may be balanced by other viewpoints which still expose issues of power and privilege but offer a less hegemonic, more culturally neutral starting point

scholarly journals Tòpics retòrics dels textos hagiogràfics bizantins i catalans

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 135
Author(s):  
Ángel Narro
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The West ◽  
Lives Of Saints ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Catalan Literature ◽  
The Middle Ages

Resum: El present treball analitza comparativament els principals tòpics retòrics presents als pròlegs de textos hagiogràfics bizantins i catalans. El punt de partença és la consolidació del gènere hagiogràfic com a tal en la literatura grega tardo-antiga i d’època bizantina i la seua influència sobre el desenvolupament de l’hagiografia en Occident, primer en llatí i després en les llengües romàniques a partir de l’Edat Mitjana. En aquest sentit, podrem observar l’ús d’un mateix repertori de caràcter retòric per presentar i embellir el text i analitzarem l’explicació d’aquest fenomen i les perspectives d’estudi a explorar.    Paraules clau: hagiografia, literatura bizantina, literatura catalana, vides de sants.   Abstract: This article is aimed to compare the main rhetorical topoi of the prologues of both Byzantine and Catalan Hagiographical texts. The starting point is the consolidation of Hagiography as a literary genre in Late Antique Greek and Byzantine literature and its influence on the development of Hagiography in the West, first on Latin and then on Romance texts from the Middle Ages. In this way, we will observe the use of similar rhetorical resources to introduce and embellish the texts and analyze the explanation of this issue and the different approaches to explore.   Keywords: hagiography, byzantine literature, catalan literature, lives of saints.  

Interviews with Li Xueqin: The Life of a Chinese Historian: Part Two

Early China ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 36-55 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Student ◽  
African Studies ◽  
University Campus ◽  
The West ◽  
Tsinghua University ◽  
Academic Communities

The following interview with Li Xueqin took place at his home in the Tsinghua University campus on June 5, 2012. In the early 1980s, I was a graduate student at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and I first became acquainted with Li when he was on a visit to SOAS. My interview began with questions about Li's experiences travelling to the West soon after China first opened up and his contributions towards building a bridge between the Chinese and Western academic communities and his.

Patrick J. Buchanan and the Death of the West

2019 ◽  
pp. 121-136
Author(s):  
Edward Ashbee
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
The West ◽  
Northern European ◽  
Universal Principles ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Us ◽  
European Heritage ◽  
Political Time ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
American Nation

This chapter discusses the life and work of Patrick J. Buchanan, who served in three US administrations before making quixotic bids for the US presidency. He was the principal standard-bearer for paleoconservatism, and he popularized a form of politics structured around the white working-class that anticipated the 2016 Trump campaign. Buchanan’s campaigns challenged long-established elites and stressed faith in an American nation based upon a distinct white, northern European heritage. Seen thus, the nation has primacy over the market and is based upon a shared ethnicity rather than on universal principles. This starting point led Buchanan toward the white identitarianism that underpinned The Death of the West in which he contended that the nation was threatened by mass nonwhite immigration. Nonetheless, Buchanan’s efforts to popularize paleoconservative claims were out of step with political time. It took Trump’s campaign to bring the ideas associated with paleoconservatism to the forefront of politics.

Doing, being and verbalizing: Narratives of queer migrants from Muslim backgrounds in Spain

Sexualities ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 136346072094458
Author(s):  
Gerard Coll-Planas ◽  
Gloria García-Romeral ◽  
Blai Martí Plademunt
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Host Society ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
The West ◽  
Complex Situation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Migrant People

The hegemonic narrative in the West establishes that having same-sex relationships constitutes an identity that must be public. This article analyses how this narrative is reproduced and/or subverted in the discourses of queer migrant people from Muslim backgrounds in Catalonia (Spain). The analysis of 10 interviews reveals a more fluid notion of sexual orientation, an uncomfortableness with the identity categories regarding sexuality, and a stronger distinction between the public and the private boundaries. The informants found themselves in a complex situation that made it impossible for them to completely reproduce or subvert the overlapping normativities of both the origin and host society, compelling them to devise hybrid strategies to live their sexuality. The article closes with a reflection on the implications of the different ways of living sexuality in relation to the theorization of sexual/intimate citizenship and LGBT equality policies, which also reproduce the western hegemonic understanding of sexuality.

Conflicts Within the Anglican Communion

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Gay Marriage ◽  
First Century ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
The West ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Church

The churches of the Anglican Communion discussed issues of sex and gender throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. Arguments about gender focused on the ordination of women to the diaconate, priesthood, and episcopate. Debates about sexuality covered polygamy, divorce and remarriage, and homosexuality. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, these debates became intensely focused on homosexuality and were particularly fierce as liberals and conservatives responded to openly gay bishops and the blessing and marriage of same-sex couples. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, the sex and gender debates had become less acrimonious, the Anglican Communion had not split on these issues as some feared, but the ‘disconnect’ between society and the Church, at least in the West, on issues such as the Church of England’s prevarication on female bishops and opposition to gay marriage, had decreased the Church’s credibility for many.

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