African Sexualities II

Abstract

In recent times there has been considerable focus on the study of sexualities in Africa. However, even in the face of stratagems to the contrary, institutions of patriarchy prevent a complete freeing up of the politics of the private, which the feminist movement and feminist discourses have been quite successful in addressing. The nation-state, dogmas of nationalism, and the work of liberationist theorists have not only hindered African female agency and voice but have also hampered the emergence of an authentic space for discourses of the private in Africa. One is aware this shortcoming is not limited to the African continent alone. Patriarchy has always been global and imperialist in nature. Also, its penetration of virtually all human institutions and practices is noted. Nonetheless, this chapter interrogates the specificity of the silence of female agency in nationalist constructions of spaces for public sexuality and finally, the sources of agency and counter-articulation created by forms of African feminisms that produce new and interesting ways to deliberate upon the nature of African sexualities. Accordingly, the major aim of this chapter is to demonstrate the ways in which traditional ideologies of modern African identity, primordial forms of patriarchy, and statist nationalism mask the real nature of African sexualities by constructing artificial categories and images while at the same time discourses associated with feminism seek to identify traces of transgression, imagination, and agency by which we can isolate and appreciate what mainstream discourses and institutions do so much to exclude.