Kenyan LGBTI activists navigate a terrain where local authorities exclude them from the national project, while western interventions tend to reproduce a representation of Africa as homophobic and “backward”. There is a widely spread among many Africans that homosexual relationships do not belong in the traditional African culture (Aarmo 1999: 255). This perception associates homosexuality with imposed westernization and deterioration of traditional values (ibid.), and paradoxically draws from the colonial assumption of Africans as “natural beings” and instinct-driven, which relied on the assumption of heterosexuality and African sexuality being linked to reproduction (Lewis 2011: 207). The body and sexuality have a central role in imagining social reproduction, as they are linked to biological reproduction. Thereby sexuality comes to represent the continuity of the wider society, through the linkages of generations. By not conforming to the cultural ideology with the emphasis on collective values, homosexuals come to represent individualism, associated with the “West,” modernity, and the dissolution of traditional values (Aarmo 1999: 276) This discourse feeds into the oppositional position of ‘morally bankrupt West’ and ‘homophobic and backward Africa’ (Sadgrove et al 2012: 108-109). These polarized imaginings lose complexities of the issue, between these categories, there exist different ways of imagining society, identity and sexualities (ibid.).
Drawing parallels between the symbolic idea of the nation as a family and new narratives of LGBTI belonging, this paper examines how the ambiguous nature of tradition becomes visible in the ways in which LGBTI-identifying youth in contemporary Kenya use elements of the global tendencies and offer a different reading of tradition by appropriating different influences and tools. New generations combine elements of imagining the pre-colonial past, while taking distance to westernization in their negotiations of identity and belonging in the era of globalization. Highlighting the tensions between the national narratives and the rising counter narratives, the paper argues that while national ideals exclude non-heterosexual individuals, there are also spaces for negotiating the terms of belonging. Furthermore, this paper considers how evolving understandings of tradition and modernity pose act of resistance to the national gender ideals, while not adopting western identity labels without criticism.
With empirical examples from contemporary Kenyan debates, this paper shows that through sharing personal stories, managing visibility, and by creatively combining elements of tradition and globalization, the LGBTI community members take an active role in the negotiation over their inclusion in social protection and justice, promised by the nation. The creative combination of elements drawn from local tradition and global influences, opens up new possibilities for imagining identities that are both African and queer.
References:
Aarmo, Margarete (1999): ‘How Homosexuality became “Un-African”: The Case of Zimbabwe in Blackwood, Evelyn and Wieringa, Saskia E (eds): Same sex relations and Female Desires – Transgender Practices Across Cultures , Colombia University Press, New York
Lewis, Desiree (2011): “Representing African Sexualities”. In Sylvia Tamale, ed. African Sexualities: A Reader. Cape Town: Pambazuka Press, 2011.
Sadgrove, Joanna, Vanderbeck, Robert M, Andersson, Johan; Valentine, Gill and Ward, Kevin (2012): ‘Morality plays and money matters: towards a situated understanding of the politics of homosexuality in Uganda’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 50, 1(2012), pp. 103-129 Cambridge University Press 2012