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ABSTRACT
This article assesses some recurrent criticisms based on respect for traditional culture levelled at artworks that thematise non-heteronormative gender positionalities in South Africa. More specifically, it reconsiders the stormy, local reception of the South African movie Inxeba (The Wound), a queer love story set in the context of the male initiation rites of the Xhosa community. The article focuses on criticisms of the movie based on the alleged misrepresentation and misappropriation of indigenous cultural practices. It aims to reflect on the complicated knot of problems that queer artists and activists have to navigate in South Africa, including entrenched heteronormative traditions, but also multiculturality and racial privilege. New ways of negotiating these problems are proposed through the development of a more complex topographical account of the intersections of multiple forms of marginality, as well as through the application of multiculturalist theories regarding ways to assist oppressed minorities in traditional cultures.
Notes
1 Inxeba, dir. by John Trengove, 2017; Skoonheid, dir. by Oliver Hermanus, 2011.
2 Queer Artivism, dir. by Maša Zia Lenárdič and Anja Wutej, 2013.
3 See Altman and Symons.
4 For other excellent scholarship on Inxeba, see Siswana and Kiguwa, as well as the special issue of the journal Image & Text: a Journal for Design titled “Discursive Cuts, Receptive Wounds: Notes on the Reception of Inxeba/The Wound”. For an excellent analysis of queer film as a genre, see Peach.
5 To mention but one unambiguous defence of the film, Bafana Khumalo – founding member of South African NGO Sonke Gender Justice – considered many of the arguments deployed by critics against the film to be mere diversions from what he considers to be the main issue, namely, intolerance toward sexual diversity (cited in Mabasa).
6 See Mgqolozana.
7 According to one source, “At least 969 initiates have died from resulting complications since 2005; many more have suffered penile amputations” (Brady).
8 Mabasa.
9 For a recent study on prevalent views of ulwaluko as a cure for homosexuality, see Ntozini and Ngqangweni.
10 On the legal issues, see de Vos).
11 Cited in Van Wyk.
12 Such an assessment is in line with Umberto Eco’s determinations on recognising pornographic films, identifying the latter’s aim as the stimulation of sexual instincts and desire, to the detriment of the substance of the story line. See Eco, 223.
13 Mookherjee, 224, and see Kymlicka.
14 Trengove, “Writer-Director John Trengove”.
15 In this regard, the spokesperson of the Congress of Traditional Leaders, Prince Abongile Ngozi, offered to help the moviemakers to correct misconceptions.
16 See Xaso and Pikoli.
17 Ntuli; Xaso and Pikoli.
18 Ibid.
19 Mandela.
20 Bengu.
21 Trengove, “Writer-Director John Trengove Talks”.
22 Emphasizing how Xhosa actors were allowed to give their own input during filming, Trengove states the following: “In the film, that’s a real community of men who enact this ritual on a regular basis. We didn’t say to them, 'Do it like this'. They showed us how their particular community performs it” (Trengove, “Foreign Contenders”).
23 Cited in Zeeman.
24 See Rancière, Aesthetics and its Discontents, and his The Politics of Aesthetics.
25 Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics, 21.
26 Ibid., 20.
27 Ibid., 21.
28 Rancière, Aesthetics and its Discontents, 29.
29 Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics, 23.
30 Rancière, Aesthetics and its Discontents, 29, 23, 25.
31 Ibid., 24.
32 See Gilroy, The Black Atlantic.
33 Ibid., 3.
34 See Trengove, “Foreign Contenders”; Brady.
35 See Spivak.
36 Trengove, “Writer-Director John Trengove Talks”, emphasis added.
37 Ibid., emphasis added.
38 Ibid.
39 Ntuli.
40 See Mercer, “Imaging the Black Man’s Sex”, 61–96.
41 Mercer, “Looking for Trouble”, 193.
42 Ibid., 191.
43 See, for example, Mookherjee.
44 Considering prevailing assumptions of the superiority of Western or liberal values in terms of toleration of alternative sexualities or even the promotion of sexual diversity, it is important to stress that there are little grounds for such claims. See, for instance, Younge.
45 Difficult Love, dir. by Zanele Muholi and Peter Goldsmid, 2010.
46 Ibid.