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QUEERING AFRICAN STUDIES African Intimacies: Race, Homosexuality, and Globalization by Neville Hoad. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Pp. 187. $60.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.
Neville Hoad offers a refreshing approach to a question that has plagued studies of African sexuality: Is homosexuality African? Over the past three decades, a range of African politicians and clergy, including Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, and Bishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria have answered with a resounding no. They have argued that homosexuality is a "perversion" that was introduced into Africa. In response, queer-friendly Africanist academics and activists have claimed that homosexual acts existed and were, in some cases, valued by a range of communities across the continent.1 In addition to documenting the presence of homosexual practices, this affirmative wave of scholarship has argued that colonialism introduced homophobia into Africa, not homosexuality.2 In these debates, precolonial Africa becomes a foundational point of reference in adjudicating the status of contemporary attitudes and policies toward homosexuality.
Instead of adopting a position on the precolonial existence of homosexuality, African Intimacies "investigates the place of an entity that comes to be called 'homosexuality' in the production (discursive, material, imaginary) of a place called 'Africa'" (xvi). This lucid thesis ties together the various strands of Africanist, postcolonial, queer, and globalization discourses that Hoad navigates with great acuity. In what is sure to become a landmark statement in the emerging subfield of queer African studies, Hoad argues that "homosexuality" is "one of the many imaginary contents, fantasies, or significations . . . that circulate in the production of African sovereignties and identities in their representation by Africans and others" (xvi). This claim revisions V. Y. Mudimbe's classic argument on the "invention" of Africa by emphasizing the foundational role of embodied, intimate practices. This argument is both timely and convincing, especially at a time when, to offer two examples, both Nigeria and Kenya have passed or have pending legislation that defines marriage, and by implication African-ness, as exclusively heterosexual - legislation that responds, in part, to the global reach of gay marriage advocacy.
African Intimacies is divided into six main chapters, which range from historical and cultural analyses to close readings of literary texts. Although not arranged this way, the chapters also line up...