“Stories we tell”: queer narratives in Kenya

ABSTRACT

Queer expressions in Kenya are caught up in various discourses of law, religion, desire, nationhood, fantasy, language, aspirations and cultural codes. As a result of these interplays that rub against each other, contradictions about queer expressions become evident. To contextualise queer expressions in Kenya, and to usefully tease out these contradictions, an understanding of Kenya’s lived realities that cohere around these discourses can be explored using an enabling narrative framework. This framework relates to how the various discourses are produced, circulated and understood about queer lives. To this end I read Stories of Our Lives (2015), a queer archival project, to show how queer bodies narrate their lives in Kenya in ways that potentially create meanings and create subjectivity against a contradictory background. This practice of queer narration is understood not as an attempt at presenting a coherent body of selves but, rather, as a conscious rendition of particular cognitions of queer analysis which ultimately becomes a site of and for new meanings for queer selves.

KEYWORDS:

• Queer
• Kenya
• same-sex
• lived experiences
• The NEST Collective
• stories of our lives

Acknowledgments

Elements of this article were presented at the Narrative Enquiry for Social Transformation (NEST) conference in Cape Town. I thank Prof. Bhekizizwe Peterson, Prof. Jill Bradbury and Dr. Danai Mupotsa for their wonderful and valuable comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The full essay can be found in AbdouMaliq Simone’s personal blog (2016).

2. See the Kenya Penal Code section 162(a) and (c) and section 165 which can be found here: file://C:/Users/1331633/Desktop/queer%20fragments/PenalCode81of1948.pdf.

3. Not to be confused with the The NEST project based at the University of the Witwatersrand, The Nest Collective is a multidisciplinary arts collective living and working in Nairobi. Founded in 2012, The Nest Collective has created works in film, music, fashion, visual arts and literature.

4. The question of loss and vulnerability becomes important to map out the tenor and depth of the queer narrative process.

5. If not otherwise indicated, references are to The NEST Collective (2015).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eddie Ombagi

Eddie Ombagi is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Department of African Literature at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. His research is located at the intersection of gender, queer and literary studies. His PhD was oriented towards imagining an epistemological framework that can articulate queer desires, affects, politics and praxis.