‘Be Wary of Working Boys’: The Cultural Production of Queer Youth in Today’s West Africa

Tsika, Noah

doi:10.1057/9781137383556_17

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 4 publications

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“…For other examples of the making of queer spaces in African (online) media, see for instanceMwangi (2014) orTsika (2014).…”

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confidence: 99%

Queer(ing) popular culture: homo-erotic provocations from Kinshasa

Hendriks

2017

Journal of African Cultural Studies

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Contemporary African societies are regularly depicted as inherently homophobic cultural spaces by Western media. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among self-consciously effeminate fioto men and their so-called 'normal' boyfriends in Kinshasa (DRC), this article troubles such monolithic images of 'African homophobia'. My interlocutors' deliberately provocative readings of music, video clips, urban painting and street performances bring to the fore surprisingly queer complicities within popular culture. Rather than discovering a 'gay' subculture hiding in the shadows of the city, this article reveals the possibilities for sexual eccentricity at the surface of urban life and demonstrates how, despite its often moralistic and sometimes violent messages, popular culture is itself always already queer. Moreover, pointing at the usually overlooked homoerotic affordances of urban ambiance as a social field for the accumulation of 'transgressive capital', my fioto interlocutors celebrate the proliferation of queer desires in spite ofand, perhaps, because ofeveryday performances of homophobia.

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“…For other examples of the making of queer spaces in African (online) media, see for instanceMwangi (2014) orTsika (2014).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Queer(ing) popular culture: homo-erotic provocations from Kinshasa

Hendriks

2017

Journal of African Cultural Studies

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Introduction: A Theory of Youth and (Non)Violence

Iwilade

2022

Youth and Non-Violence in Africa’s Fragile Contexts

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Narrating sexual identities in Kenya: “Choice,” value, and visibility

Zingsheim

Goltz

Murphy

et al. 2016

Journal of Lesbian Studies

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This article examines the discursive construction of female same-sex sexual identities in Nairobi. We identify the discursive forces of "choice," devaluation, and invisibility as influential within Kenyan media representations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex citizens. Using creative focus groups and participant observation, we demonstrate how same-sex attracted women in Nairobi resist and rearticulate these discursive forces to assert their identity and agency as individuals and as a queer community.

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‘Be Wary of Working Boys’: The Cultural Production of Queer Youth in Today’s West Africa

Cited by 3 publications

References 4 publications

Queer(ing) popular culture: homo-erotic provocations from Kinshasa

Queer(ing) popular culture: homo-erotic provocations from Kinshasa

Introduction: A Theory of Youth and (Non)Violence

Narrating sexual identities in Kenya: “Choice,” value, and visibility

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