Locating “Queer” in Contemporary Writing of Love and War in Nigeria

Munro, Brenna

doi:10.2979/reseafrilite.47.2.08

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…In any case, one offshoot of this emergent interest is the Queer African Studies Association, inaugurated in 2015 as a coordinate organization within the African Studies Association (USA). Although this field has been characterized by a strong focus on South Africa as an apparent key site of “the dream of love to come” (Munro 2012; see also Spurlin 2006; Tucker 2009; Livermon 2012; Morison, Lynch & Reddy 2019; Sizemore-Barber 2020; Riley 2021), recent years have witnessed an increasing body of scholarship on queer subjectivities and politics in other parts of the continent, such as Democratic Republic of Congo (Hendriks 2018, 2022), Ghana (Dankwa 2021; Otu 2022), Kenya (Ombagi 2019a; van Klinken 2019), Nigeria (Gaudio 2009; Munro 2016; Onanuga 2021), Mozambique (De Araújo 2021a, 2021b), and Uganda (Rodriguez 2019; Rao 2020). Methodologically and thematically, the focus is wide-ranging, from social movements and community organizing (Broqua 2012; Guéboguo 2008; Mbaye 2018; Nyeck & Epprecht 2013; Lorway 2015; Vrede 2020) to creative forms of visibility and activism, such as through arts (Meiu 2022), literature (Adenekan 2021; Azuah 2009, 2019; Mwangi 2017; Ofei & Oppong-Adjei 2021; Zabus 2013), film (Johnstone 2021; Ncube 2020, 2021; Ndjio 2021; Otu 2021; Scott 2021; Green-Simms 2022), social media (Gunkel 2013; Mwangi 2014; Onanuga 2021), sports (Ndjio 2022), autobiographical storytelling (Baderoon 2015; Oloruntoba-Oju 2021; Ombagi 2019b; Stobie 2014; van Klinken & Stiebert 2021), and material objects (Meiu 2020).…”

Section: “Africa” and “Queer” As Oppositional?mentioning

confidence: 99%

African Studies Keywords: Queer

Otu¹,

Klinken²

2023

Afr. Stud. Rev.

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“Queer” is a relatively recent and somewhat controversial term in African studies. Yet it is proving to be productive, not only for understanding African subjectivities of sexuality and gender, but also for situating Africa’s position in the larger economy of knowledge. Otu and van Klinken explore the productive tensions between “queer” and “Africa,” and aim to read Africa as queer and to read queer from Africa. Thus, rather than imagining Africa and queer as polar opposites, the authors seek to harness the critical, productive, and creative affinities between these two terms that are vital for the project of decolonizing and queering queer Africa.

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Section: “Africa” and “Queer” As Oppositional?mentioning

confidence: 99%

African Studies Keywords: Queer

Otu¹,

Klinken²

2023

Afr. Stud. Rev.

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“…Mine is not the first study to examine Iweala's Beasts. Among others, scholars including Robert Eaglestone (2008), Alexandra Schultheis (2008), Madelaine Hron (2008), Eleni Coundouriotis (2010, John Kearney (2010), Maureen Moynagh (2011;, Stephen Gray (2011), Allison Mackey (2013), David Mastey (2015;), Brenna Munro (2016, and Sakiru Adebayo (2019) have studied Beasts from divergent perspectives.…”

Section: Beasts Of No Nation As a Narrative Of Recovery Of Lost Child...mentioning

confidence: 99%

A tale of two fighters: images of child soldiers in Jewish and African child soldier narratives

Adesola

2022

Journal of the African Literature Association

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This dissertation examines the representations of African child soldiers in selected contemporary African narratives with a view to mapping the dominant factors that writers privilege in their depictions of child soldiering in sub-Saharan Africa. In its engagement with the African child soldier genre, this study posits that critical discussions of African child soldier literature have depended on the interpretive frameworks supplied by Western humanitarian discourses which oversimplify and de-historicize experiences of war in Africa. Such reductive decontextualizations of war realities, I argue, serve to champion a narrow vision of war in African contexts centred on a moral and humanitarian urge for Western intervention. Regardless of whether the casus belli legitimating those wars are genuine or not, those conflicts (and children's involvement in them) are understood within the same racist colonial and ethnocentric stereotypes about Africa that have been privileged in Western thought and the Western moralpolitical imagination for centuries.Thus, in studying African child soldier narratives, I focus on novels whose settings feature African ethnopolitical conflictssuch as in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Congo-Brazzaville, Nigerianotable for their exploitation of children for military ends. I maintain that these works are significant in the varying ways they reify and challenge the Western ideas of "child" and "childhood," as well as privilege child soldiers as social actors whose intricate makeups disavow being simply understood as innocent victims or irredeemable perpetrators of atrocities.Moreover, I contend that these works also participate in age-old Afropessimistic depictions of a homogenous Africa where it is dangerous to be children, where human lives have no meaning, and where wars are waged senselessly.Overall, my textual-interpretive analyses of the selected novels in this study emphasize the importance of some works belonging to the African child soldier canon to ongoing campaigns against the mobilization of child soldiers and the rehabilitation processes employed by international organizations and transnational NGOs concerned with children at war. In this regard, my critique of African child soldier narratives reveals that the understanding of prewar conditions is vital to initiating viable policies for the protection of children.iii AcknowledgementsIn reflecting on the trajectory of my doctoral program and its culmination in this dissertation, I am once again reminded of the appreciative mindfulness of Niyi Osundare's speaker in his poem entitled "People Are My Clothes," one of the poems from the book on the poet's experience of Katrina -City Without People (2012). Like the grateful speaker in that verse, I too have cause to celebrate the matchless kindness and unconditional generosity of different people towards me while undertaking this research. In varying but consistently impactful ways these people paid attention to me. They cared for me. All that they joyously did for me contributed significantly to t...

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Queer Childhoods and Multidirectional Desire

Ouma

2020

Childhood in Contemporary Diasporic African Literature

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Locating “Queer” in Contemporary Writing of Love and War in Nigeria

Cited by 6 publications

References 12 publications

African Studies Keywords: Queer

African Studies Keywords: Queer

A tale of two fighters: images of child soldiers in Jewish and African child soldier narratives

Queer Childhoods and Multidirectional Desire

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