Know your history: Toward an eternally displaceable strategic essentialism

ABSTRACT

Queer Africans in diaspora often reclaim histories obscured by colonialism. Implicit in gay Nigerian activist Bisi Alimi’s influential archival work is an anti-colonial, but strategically essentialist, claim of a historical place for queer African peoples. I submit “historical place” and “(dis)placing” to understand queer disidentifications with historical construction. The risks of strategic essentialism can become epistemological opportunities for identity building. My analysis first traces how strategic essentialism persuasively constructs historical place and then explores how (dis)placing unsettles epistemological constructions of queer African identity. Advocating for a recognition of multiplicity, I encourage scholars to understand (dis)placing as complex vernacular discursive strategy that produces further possibilities for belonging and anti-colonial imagination.

KEYWORDS:

• Strategic essentialism
• queer Africans
• anti-colonialism
• disidentification
• Black diaspora

Acknowledgments

Olaniyan (pronounced [aw-LA-nee-yaw]) thanks Dr. Kent Ono, Musa Babatunde of Sorolingo, Kholo M. Theledi, Charnell Peters, Dr. Marouf Hasian, and all anonymous reviewers for their overwhelming support and thoughtful guidance.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

O. M. Olaniyan

O. M. Olaniyan [aw-LA-nee-yaw] holds an M.A. in Communication and Rhetorical Studies from Syracuse University. Olaniyan is currently a doctoral student of Communication at the University of Utah.