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ABSTRACT
In this essay, we advocate for a queer (post)colonial studies as a continuation of the critical foundational work that has been done by postcolonial feminists, women of color, queer people of color and non-academic activists. In doing so, we make the case for critical/cultural scholars to engage with queerness through postcoloniality and decoloniality as a way to lay bare the geopolitical imbalances and colonial entanglements in which queer scholarship is done. As an exemplar case study to support our argument, we examine the controversy that emerged from the Comprehensive Sexuality Education proposal in Ghana, West Africa. In the end, we argue that queer (post)colonial studies is imperative for critical/cultural communication because it refuses the Western heteronormative structures that claim to have domination over the bodies and future, turning instead to what we may imagine once our intimate desires are loosed from heteronormative, colonial, and homonationalist holds.
Notes
1 We use (post)colonial throughout the work, other than when referencing specific scholarly contributions, in order to recognize both shifting forms of colonialism as well as the continuation of coloniality.
2 Raka Shome and Radha Hegde, “Postcolonial Approaches to Communication: Charting the Terrain, Engaging the Intersections,” Communication Theory 12, no. 3 (2002): 249–70.
3 Gust A. Yep, Karen E. Lovaas, and John P. Elia, eds., Queer Theory and Communication: From Disciplining Queers to Queering the Discipline(s) (New York: Routledge, 2003).
4 Gust A. Yep, “The Violence of Heteronormativity in Communication Studies: Notes on Injury, Healing and Queer World-making,” Journal of Homosexuality 45 no. 2-4 (2003): 11–59.
5 Tiara R. Na’puti, “Oceanic Possibilities for Communication Studies,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 17, no. 1 (2020): 95–103.
6 Scott Lauria Morgensen, “Settler Homonationalism: Theorizing Settler Colonialism within Queer Modernities,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 16, no. 1–2 (2010): 106.
7 John C. Hawley, ed., Postcolonial, Queer: Theoretical Intersections (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2001).
8 Karma R. Chávez, Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities(Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 87.
9 Jasbir K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007).
10 Devika Chawla and Ahmet Atay, “Introduction: Decolonizing Autoethnography,” Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 18, no. 1 (2018): 3–8; Ahmet Atay, “Defining Transnational Queer Media and Popular Culture,” Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture 4, no. 3 (2019): 233–9.
11 María Lugones, “Heterosexism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System,” Hypatia 22, no. 1 (2007): 186–209.
12 Jenna N. Hanchey, “Toward a Relational Politics of Representation,” Review of Communication 18, no. 4 (2018): 266.
13 Shome and Hegde, “Postcolonial Approaches,” 262.
14 Rae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre, “Communicating Colonialism: An Introduction,” in Communicating Colonialism: Readings on Postcolonial Theory(s) and Communication, ed. Rae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre (New York: Peter Lang, 2014), 1–36.
15 Karma R. Chávez, “Pushing Boundaries: Queer Intercultural Communication,” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 6, no. 2 (2013): 83-95; William J. Spurlin, “Broadening Postcolonial Studies/Decolonizing Queer Studies,” Postcolonial, Queer: Theoretical Intersections, eds. John Charles Hawley (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001), 185–205.
16 María Lugones, “Heterosexism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System.”
17 Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).
18 Godfried Asante, “Anti-LGBT Violence and the Ambivalent (Colonial) Discourse of Ghanaian Pentecostalist-Charismatic Church Leaders,” Howard Journal of Communication 31, no. 1 (2020): 20–34; Neville Hoad, African Intimacies: Race, Homosexuality and Globalization (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007).
19 See, for instance: Kwame Otu, “Saints and Sinners: African Holocaust, ‘Clandestine Countermemories’ and LGBT visibility politics in Postcolonial Africa,” in Being and Becoming: Gender, Culture and Shifting Identity in Sub-Saharan Africa, ed. Chinyere Ukpokolo (Denver, CO: Spears Media, 2016), 195–217.
20 Yep and others, Queer Theory in Communication.
21 Gust A. Yep, “Queering/Quaring/Kauering/ Crippin’/Transing ‘Other Bodies’ in Intercultural Communication,” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 6, no. 2 (2013): 118–26.
22 Yep, “Queering/Quaring/Kauering/Crippin’/Transing.”
23 David Eng, The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).
24 Eng, as cited in Chávez, “Pushing Boundaries,” 48.
25 Puar, Terrorist Assemblages.
26 Jin Haritaworn, Tamsila Tauqir, and Esra Erdem, “Gay Imperialism: Gender and Sexuality Discourse in the ‘War on Terror’,” in Out of Place: Interrogating Silences in Queerness/ Raciality, eds. Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake (York, UK: Raw Nerve Books Ltd, 2008), 71–95.
27 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
28 Mathew Dylan, “Donald Trump’s Pro-Gay Islamophobia is Straight Out of European Right-Wing Playbook,” Vox.com, June 13, 2016, https://www.vox.com/2016/6/13/11924826/donald-trump-islamophobia-muslim-lgbtq-europe-wilders.
29 Human Rights Watch, “The State of Human Rights for LGBT people in Africa,” 2014, https://www.hrc.org/resources/report-the-state-of-human-rights-for-lgbt-people-in-africa.
30 Asante, “Anti-LGBT Violence.”
31 Timothy Ngnenbe, “Ghanaians Divided Over New Sexuality Education,” The Daily Graphic, October 1, 2019, https://www.graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/ghanaians-divided-over-new-sexuality-education.html; Lawrence Markewei, “President Wont Accept CSE,” The Ghanaian Times, October 31, 2019, https://www.ghanaiantimes.com.gh/president-wont-accept-cse/; Marian Ansah, “Agreeing to Implement ‘Reckless’ CSE a Betrayal of Ghanaians-Minority,” Citinewsroom.com, October 4, 2019, https://citinewsroom.com/2019/10/agreeing-to-implement-reckless-cse-a-betrayal-of-ghanaians-minority/.
32 Facing the facts: the case for comprehensive sexuality education, UNESCO Global Education Report, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000368231.
33 Lindberg, Laura Duberstein, Isaac Maddow-Zimet, and Heather Boonstra, “Changes in Adolescents’ Receipt of Sex Education, 2006–2013,” Journal of Adolescent Health 58, no. 6 (2016): 621–627.
34 Sabelo J. Ndolovu-Gatsheni, Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization (New York: Routledge, 2018), 3.
35 Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Identity: Community Culture and Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), 225.
36 Jacqui Alexander, Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 66.
37 Desiree Lewis, “Representing African Sexualities,” in African Sexualities: A Reader, ed. Sylvia Tamale (Nairobi: Pambazuka Press, 2013), 119–217.
38 Asante, “Anti-LGBT Violence.”
39 Nelly Peyton, “Ghana Sex Education Program Sparks Anti-LGBT+ Outrage,” Thompson Reuters, October 1, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL5N26M4LI; Here is why Ghana’s sex education program is controversial, Africanews.com, October 3, 2019, https://www.africanews.com/2019/10/03/here-s-why-ghana-s-sex-education-program-is-controversial//.
40 Sibongile Ndashe, “The Single Story of African Homophobia is Dangerous for LGBT Activism,” in Queer African Reader, eds. Hakima Abbas and Sokari Ekine (Nairobi: Pambazuka Press, 2013).
41 Otu, “Saints and Sinners.”
42 Ryan Richard Thoreson, “Troubling the Waters of a ‘Wave of Homophobia’: Political Economies of Anti-Queer Animus in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Sexualities 17, no. 1–2 (2014): 23–42.
43 Qwo-Li Driskill, “Doubleweaving Two-spirit Critiques: Building Alliances Between Native and Queer Studies,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 16, no. 1–2 (2010): 69-92.
44 Puar, Terrorist Assemblages.
45 Morgensen, “Settler Homonationalism.”
46 Godfried Asante, “Decolonizing the Erotic: Building Alliances of (Queer) African Eros,” Women’s Studies in Communication 43, no. 2 (2020): 115.
47 Jenna N. Hanchey, “Desire and the Politics of Africanfuturism,” Women’s Studies in Communication 3, no. 2 (2020): 121.
48 Ibid.