Abstract

This thesis answers Stella Nyanzi’s (2015) call for an urgent need for a purely African-curated queer rebuttal on the un-Africanness of homosexuality in the motherland in her paper “Knowledge is requisite power.” As an African lesbian agender, in this thesis, I not only add to the historico-political fact that homophobia is a remnant of colonial rule. I also tease apart the forces that sustain this repression–structural-heteropatriarchy, Middle Eastern religions, and coloniality: to elucidate how un-African and historico-philosophically incorrect it is for African leaders to weaponize the myth that homosexuality is un-African in their anti-SOGIESC rights standpoints. I borrow mainly from Foucauldian philosophies to evince how homophobia–a distinctly Western phenomenon at the time of colonization was conjured onto the African continent and is bulwarked by the very powers that breathed life into it. I employ an African queer feminist-womanist qualitative and quantitative comparative analysis of literature from queer and decolonial scholars along with data from the United Nations, Open Democracy, Freedom House, and Statista.com in my argument that structural-heteropatriarchy, Middle Eastern religions, and coloniality co-constitute and co-bulwark homophobia in the Southern African Development Community.

Degree

Master of Arts (MA)

Degree Date

2023

First Advisor

Dr. Shahara'Tova Dente

Document Type

Thesis

Download

Share

COinS