HATE CRIMES AGAINST BLACK LESBIAN SOUTH AFRICANS: WHERE RACE, SEXUAL ORIENTATION AND GENDER COLLIDE (PART I)

This article, which is the first of a two-part submission, examines the phenomenon of gender-based violence against black lesbian South Africans. The course and incidence of gender-based violence against black lesbians are tracked from both media articles and academic contributions. The various forms of criminal conduct which characterize the phenomenon (including “corrective rape” and murder) are also examined. The article concludes with a limited causal explanation for what has emerged as a serious social problem in present-day South Africa necessitating government intervention in the form of a recently announced Task Team.

Rewriting the Nigerian Nation and Reimagining the Lesbian Nigerian Woman in Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees (2015)

This paper presents a revised paradigm of the postcolonial Nigerian nation through the exploration of the figure of the black lesbian in Nigeria. I argue that the reconceptualisation of Nigerian nationhood is enabled through the revision by Chinelo Okparanta in her debut novel Under the Udala Trees (2015) of subaltern and abject Nigerian womanhood carried out from a homoerotic or Afroqueer standpoint. The exploration of lesbian Nigerian woman(hood) from a literary stance clearly represents a valuable and subversive way of re-writing, re-constructing and re-conceptualising the postcolonial Nigerian nation so that othered subjectivities can also become part of the nation-building project. Okparanta, considered an Afrosporic and transcultural writer, interpellates the Nigerian nation in order to present us with post-abyssal configurations that transcend reductive and monolithic discourses. Drawing on the work of a wide array of scholars belonging to Postcolonial, Gender and Queer Studies —such as Neville Hoad, Ifi Amadiume, Lindsey Green-Simms, and Lee Edelman— I demonstrate how Okparanta’s novel can work as an example of resistance against hegemonic, heteronormative and Eurocentric representations of Africa.

For a Black Lesbian Museology

In this paper, I introduce part of my academic-activist trajectory from a biomitography (Lorde, 1984) of “escrevivências” (Evaristo, 2007). With that, I present the crossing of my own political practices linked to my research practices as a museum professional and Sociomuseology activist. By establishing an approximation of the New Museology movement, of LGBT Museology, as well as of a museology permeated by the (in) visibility of narratives, memories and cultural heritage claimed by sexually dissident black women, I intend to articulate a territory of epistemic dispute for the nomination of a Black Lesbian Museology. Palavras-chave: Biomitografia, Escrevivências, Sociomuseologia, Museologia LGBT, Museologia Lésbica Negra. Keywords: Biomitography, Escrivivências, Sociomuseology, LGBT Museology, Black Lesbian Museology.