Queer(ing) popular culture: homo-erotic provocations from Kinshasa

ABSTRACT

Contemporary African societies are regularly depicted as inherently homophobic cultural spaces by Western media. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among self-consciously effeminate fioto men and their so-called ‘normal’ boyfriends in Kinshasa (DRC), this article troubles such monolithic images of ‘African homophobia’. My interlocutors’ deliberately provocative readings of music, video clips, urban painting and street performances bring to the fore surprisingly queer complicities within popular culture. Rather than dis-covering a ‘gay’ subculture hiding in the shadows of the city, this article reveals the possibilities for sexual eccentricity at the surface of urban life and demonstrates how, despite its often moralistic and sometimes violent messages, popular culture is itself always already queer. Moreover, pointing at the usually overlooked homoerotic affordances of urban ambiance as a social field for the accumulation of ‘transgressive capital’, my fioto interlocutors celebrate the proliferation of queer desires in spite of – and, perhaps, because of – everyday performances of homophobia.

RÉSUMÉ

Des sociétés africaines contemporaines sont souvent représentées comme des espaces intrinsèquement homophobes dans les médias occidentaux. Cet article trouble l’image monolithique d’une telle « homophobie africaine » à partir d’une recherche ethnographique parmi des hommes qui s’identifient comme fioto (ou efféminés) et leurs partenaires dits « normaux » à Kinshasa (RDC). Mes interlocuteurs font des lectures délibérément provocatrices de certaines musiques, vidéos, peintures et performances, qui mettent en évidence des complicités queer dans la culture populaire. Au lieu de découvrir une sous-culture « gay » qui ne se manifesterait que dans les ombres de la ville, cet article met en avance une excentricité sexuelle à la surface de la vie urbaine. Il démontre comment, malgré ses messages souvent moralisateurs et parfois violents, la culture populaire elle-même est en quelque sorte déjà queer. En indiquant les potentialités homo-érotiques souvent ignorées de l’ambiance urbaine comme champ social dans lequel on accumule du « capital transgressif », mes interlocuteurs fioto célèbrent la prolifération de désirs dissidents malgré – et à travers – des expressions quotidiennes dites homophobes.

KEYWORDS:

• Homophobia
• homosexuality
• popular culture
• youth
• hedonism
• music
• transgression
• democratic Republic of Congo

MOTS CLÉS:

• Homophobie
• homosexualité
• culture populaire
• jeunesse
• hédonisme
• musique
• transgression
• République Démocratique du Congo

Acknowledgements

Previous iterations of this article were presented at the Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association UK (September 7–9, 2016; University of Cambridge), the African Studies Centre Seminar at the University of Oxford (November 24, 2016) and the Dissident Desires Africa/Asia Symposium at the University of Amsterdam (March 20–22, 2017). I thank Carli Coetzee, Sudeep Dasgupta, Kristien Geenen, Peter Geschiere, Katrien Pype, Rachel Spronk and Jonny Steinberg for their insightful comments and suggestions. And I will always remain indebted to my fioto interlocutors for their provocative thinking, warm friendship, and wicked humour, although – for reasons of anonymity – this article is unable to give them the individual recognition they deserve.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Words in italic and between brackets are Lingala or French terms my interlocutors commonly use in everyday parlance.

2 The ‘fields’ of family, church and ambiance comprise what Pype (2012, 234) conceptualizes as the three dominant gender ‘games’ in Kinshasa: lineage-related codes of marriage, Christian morality and urban hedonistic modernity.

3 Kinshasa is far from the only city where local inflections of ‘hedonism’ define urban modernities. See, for instance, Aterianus-Owanga (2016) for Libreville, Dorier-Apprill, Kouvouama, and Apprill (1998) for Brazzaville, Newell (2012) for Abidjan or Ferguson (1999) for the Zambian Copperbelt.

4 E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFiBvrwxuyY (Ba maman kangi ba pede ba zo sala action na zamba; ‘Women caught homosexuals who were doing it in the bushes’)

5 For other examples of the making of queer spaces in African (online) media, see for instance Mwangi (2014) or Tsika (2014).

6 E.g. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk2tfOX59fM (Ba homosexual ba bimisi ba vérités choquantes, pedai moko a drague journaliste en plein interview; ‘Homosexuals say shocking things, one pédé seduces a journalist during the interview’).

7 I use the term ‘fioto craze’ to point out the striking analogies with the so-called ‘pansy craze’ described by Chauncey (1994) for 1930s New York.

8 E.g. interviews in which Patrick is confronted to a female counterpart who challenges his femininity: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdJ91r61KU4 (+20 ans: Pede Patrick ba seduite pe ba embrasse ye epa tendresse en plein emission, azongi mobali!; ‘+20 years: Pédé Patrick is seduced and kissed at tendresse in full broadvasting, he became a man [again]’).

9 E.g. www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JFv6NV6IbY (Famille ya Patrick Lokwa babimisi vérité pona nini a koma pede bolanda histoure ya bie naye; ‘Patrick Lokwa's family tell the truth about why he became a pédé, hear the story of his life’).

10 The notion of mwasi mobali, for instance, refers to women who make a professional career and often manifest themselves as ‘powerful’ and ‘masculine’ on the urban stage.

11 See, for instance, the popular comedian Freddy Bonganda, whose well-known character ‘Maman Mbaliosombo’ does not raise any questions about Bonganda's masculinity or ‘normal’ sexuality.

12 E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwHvMmIGoVQ (Bolanda comedie ya Duchesse, Pululu, Micho na tournage ya kader; ‘Follow the comedy of Duchesse, Pululu, Micho during the making of kader’).

13 E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq7j3iOSxDo (Pédé ou Kalayi Ngangu: A Kinshasa les garcons se déguisent en filles pour moyen de vivre; ‘Pédé or street comedian: In Kinshasa boys dress as girls to survive’).

14 Originating in the youth subculture of the ‘Bills’, who modelled their transgressive masculinities on the iconic figure of the Hollywood cowboy in 1950s and 60s Léopoldville, ‘Yankee’ has become a widely used term for self-identified ‘tough’ young men who know how to navigate the dangers and opportunities of the urban world (Gondola 2016).

15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wByg4omA5jk (Ferre Gola – Seben – Clip Officiel)

16 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XktzHbVWAj0 (Papa Wemba: Penitence na ngai)

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a postdoctoral research grant from the Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds (University of Leuven) (2013–14) from the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, Vlaanderen (FWO) (2014–2017).