Beyond the binary: Same-sex desire and gender defiance in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions

Abstract

This article reads Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions through the critical perspectives of queer and postcolonial theories to explore how the intimate relationship between the narrator Tambudzai and her cousin Nyasha is constructed beyond the binary of “homosexual” and “heterosexual”, and outside the temporal markers of “colonial” and “postcolonial”. In particular, it focuses on the role that colonial objects of material culture play in Tambu and Nyasha's intimate and evolving relationship. Clothing, books, tampons and music become catalysts which encourage Tambu and Nyasha to interrogate their gendered and sexual preferences. At the same time, Tambu and Nyasha queer these objects' homogenizing imperial purposes and in doing so produce same-sex eroticism. While ideas of sexual attraction change in relation to clothing and books, tampons present alternative sexual options outside the sometimes aggressive demands of heterosexual sex. In searching for multiple ways to express their mutually constituted identities as African and female, Tambu and Nyasha expose the limitations of rigid sexual and national identities. Their relationship, marked by various cultural traditions and languages, scatters the heterosexual/homosexual binary while subtly resisting material colonial practices.

Keywords:

• Nervous Conditions
• Tsitsi Dangarembga
• gender
• queer
• same-sex desire
• material culture