The idea of African men: dealing with the cultural contradictions of sex in academia and in Kenya

Abstract

In this paper, I reflect on the notion of 'African men' as it is employed in global health scholarship and disentangle the way the idea is used as a generative concept. I explore how this notion circulates and gets modified, adapted and reproduced by scholars, on the one hand, and by various groups of men in Africa, on the other. I argue that the use of the idea of African men as an a priori category in scholarly imagination and practice presents us with stereotypes that impede much research. I then briefly connect with what has been analysed as the hegemonic discourse on Africa as the paradigm of difference, and the history of local modes of self-presentation as Africans. In Kenya, among both men and women, the use of the phrase African men as a natural category of sexual agents has been used to explain or justify men's multiple sexual relations. Yet if we look more closely at men's experiences, it becomes clear how men are caught up in conflicting discourses of masculinity. I conclude that we need to analyse gender as a performative quality that is both constructed and meaningful.

“I am African, iko nini”

“…Gerontocratic power structures imply a hierarchy of men, and hegemonic idea(l)s of masculinity are threatened by men who differ from the norm. In every generation, younger men were being told to maintain certain definitions of masculinity, while the practical and legitimizing foundations of the patriarchal ideology have been disintegrating (such as being the main provider when increasing numbers of women also have salaries) for several generations of men now (Spronk 2014b).…”

“Let’s Move, Let’s Not Remain Stagnant”: Nationalism, Masculinism, and School-Based Education in Mozambique

“…Thus, the masculinized humiliation and memory that Enloe (2000) speaks of need to be understood in relation to two intersecting processes of colonialization: that of Othering, and silencing and forgetting (Spronk 2014). By imposing its own Portuguese memory on Mozambicans, Maria Paula Meneses (2012) Education was critical to what might be understood as the relocation of the formerly colonized man.…”

“…The new man, who was modeled on the guerrilla nationalist of the recent past, and defined as a person liberated from the external and internal forms of oppression and exploitation described above, became "the icon of the truly Mozambican citizen" ( The excerpt is illustrative of an imperial masculinity whereby Mozambicans were cast as the racial Other: primitive, childlike, and not fully human, but partially redeemable when tamed by "real," middle-class, European men (see also Meneses 2012;Spronk 2014). Furthermore, as the following quote from a 1977 speech delivered by one of Frelimo's founding members Sergio Vieira suggests, the sense of inferiority and humiliation Sr. Mateo alludes to above needs to be understood in spatiotemporal terms.…”

“…As noted by Isa- Frelimo's interpretation of women's emancipation in largely economic terms needs to be understood as illustrative of Chatterjee's (1986) argument that anticolonial nationalist movements were grounded in the very colonial structures and hierarchies they strove to discard (see also Yeğenoğlu 1998;Spronk 2014).…”

Portraying fathers

“…This photo essay works against the tendency to homogenize 'men', and in particular 'African men', as a category of actors in the fields of sexual and reproductive health (Spronk 2014). Instead, we highlight the dynamic and contested nature of men's roles in procreation, in relation to globalizing reproductive health discourses, practices, and technologies.…”