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ABSTRACT
In this article, I examine how LGBT empowerment is discursively constructed within the material context of postcolonial Ghana, arguing that LGBT empowerment emerges as a contentious site of “glocalized assemblage” that condenses multiple meanings and spatio-temporal histories of colonization, gender, and sexuality to produce contradictory and paradoxical effects on Sassoi. I explain how neoliberal frames of governmentality are embedded in LGBT-centred empowerment programmes through discursive evocations of community, personal responsibility and human rights education. In conclusion, I argue for queer (post)colonial approaches to LGBT empowerment that open up spaces for radical imaginations to social change in Ghana and across the Global South.
Notes
1 Eve Ng, “LGBT Advocacy and Transnational Funding in Singapore and Malaysia,” Development and Change 49, no. 4 (2018): 1093–14.
2 Ng, LGBT Advocacy and Transnational Funding.
3 Meredith L. Weiss and Michael J. Bosia, eds., Global Homophobia: States, Movements, and the Politics of Oppression (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2013).
4 Jonathan Capehart, “Clinton's Geneva Accord: ‘Gay Rights are Human Rights.’” Washington Post, December, 7, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/clintons-geneva-accord-gay-rights-are-human-rights/2011/03/04/gIQAPUipcO_blog.html
5 Godfried Agyeman Asante, “Anti-LGBT Violence and the Ambivalent (Colonial) Discourses of Ghanaian Pentecostalist-Charismatic Church Leaders,” Howard Journal of Communications 31, no. 1 (2020): 20–34.
6 Amar Wahab, “‘Homosexuality/Homophobia Is Un-African’?: Un-Mapping Transnational Discourses in the Context of Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill/Act,” Journal of Homosexuality 63, no. 5 (2016): 707.
7 Hakima Abbas and Sokari Ekine, eds., Queer African Reader (Nairobi: Pambazuka Press, 2013).
8 Amar, “Homosexuality/Homophobia is Un-African?”
9 Neville Wallace Hoad, African Intimacies: Race, Homosexuality, and Globalization. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007).
10 Roderick A. Ferguson and Grace Kyungwon Hong, “The Sexual and Racial Contradictions of Neoliberalism,” Journal of Homosexuality 59, no. 7 (2012): 1060.
11 Jon Binnie, “Neoliberalism, Class, Gender and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Politics in Poland,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 27, no. 2 (2014): 241–57.
12 Aihwa Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).
13 Asante, “Anti-LGBT Violence.”
14 Raka Shome and Radha S. Hegde, “Postcolonial Approaches to Communication: Charting the Terrain, Engaging the Intersections,” Communication Theory 12, no. 3 (2002): 249–70.
15 Shome and Hegde, “Postcolonial Approaches to Communication.”
16 Ibid.
17 William J. Spurlin. “Broadening Postcolonial Studies/Decolonizing Queer Studies,” in Postcolonial, Queer: Theoretical Intersections, ed. John Hawley (New York: SUNY Press, 2001), 185–205.
18 Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (London: Routledge, 2013.)
19 Kwame Edwin Otu, “Normative Collusions and Amphibious Evasions,” in Routledge Handbook of Queer African Studies, ed. S.N. Nyeck (London: Routledge, 2019).
20 Shinsuke Eguchi and Godfried Asante, “Disidentifications Revisited: Queer(y)ing Intercultural Communication Theory,” Communication Theory 26, no. 2 (2016): 171–89.
21 Eguchi and Asante, “Disidentifications Revisited.”
22 Peter A. Jackson, “An Explosion of Thai Identities: Global Queering and Re-imagining Queer Theory,” Culture, Health & Sexuality 2, no. 4 (2000): 407.
23 Nikolas Rose, Pat O’Malley, and Mariana Valverde, “Governmentality,” Annual Review of Law and Social Science. no. 2 (2006): 83–104.
24 Peter Miller and Nikolas Rose, “Governing Economic Life,” Economy and Society 19, no. 1 (1990): 1–31.
25 Ibid.
26 For example: Dennis Altman, “Rupture or Continuity? The Internationalization of Gay Identities,” Social Text no. 48 (1996): 77–94; Jon Binnie, “Neoliberalism”; Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé and Martin F. Manalansan, eds., Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism. Vol. 9. (New York: NYU Press, 2002).
27 Karma Chávez, “Pushing Boundaries.”
28 Jasbir Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018).
29 David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (London: Oxford University Press, 2007), 71.
30 Aradhana Sharma, Logics of Empowerment: Development, Gender, and Governance in Neoliberal India (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 109.
31 Aihwa Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception, 11.
32 David L. Eng, The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010).
33 Rahul Rao, “Global Homocapitalism,” Radical Philosophy no. 194 (2015): 38–49.
34 Lee Badgett, “The Economic Cost of Stigma and the Exclusion of LGBT People: A Case Study of India.” https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/21515 (World Bank Report 2014).
35 Corrine Mason, ed., Routledge Handbook of Queer Development Studies (New York: Routledge, 2018).
36 Binnie, “Neoliberalism,” 244.
37 Rao, “Global Homocapitalism.”
38 Binnie, “Neoliberalism.”
39 Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “In the Shadow of the Shadow State,” in The Revolution Will Not be Funded, ed. INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), p. 41–52.
40 Victoria Bernal, and Inderpal Grewal, eds., Theorizing NGOs: States, Feminisms, and Neoliberalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014).
41 Bernal and Grewal, Theorizing NGOs.
42 Hannah Britton, “Organizing Against Gender Violence in South Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies 32, no. 1 (2006): 145–63.
43 Kaitlin Dearham, “NGOs and Queer Women's Activism in Nairobi,” in Queer African Reader, eds. Sokari Ekine and Hakima Abbas (Nairobi: Pambazuka Press 2013): 186–202.
44 Ana-Maurine Lara, “Strategic Universalisms and Dominican LGBT Activist Struggles for Civil and Human Rights,” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 22, no. 2 (56) (2018): 99–114.
45 Norman Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language (London: Routledge, 2013).
46 Brandi Lawless and Yea-Wen Chen, “Developing a Method of Critical Thematic Analysis for Qualitative Communication Inquiry,” Howard Journal of Communications 30, no. 1 (2019): 92–106.
47 Nii Ajen, “West African Homoeroticism: West African Men Who Have Sex With Men,” in Boy Wives and Female Husbands, eds. Stephen Murray and Will Roscoe (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998).
48 Kuukwa Andam, “Ghana,” in Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History, eds. Howard Chiang and Anjali Arondekar (Boston: Cengage Publishers, 2019).
49 Here, I refer to Myrl Beam's work on U.S.-based LGBT NGOs and the ideological work of compassion to seek financial support. Beam, Myrl. Gay, Inc.: The Nonprofitization of Queer Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018).
50 Eric Karikari, José Castro-Sotomayor, and Godfried Asante, “Illegal Mining, Identity, and the Politics of Ecocultural Voice in Ghana,” in Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, eds. Tema Milstein and Jose Sotomayor (London: Routledge, 2020), 240–59.
51 Wendy Isaack, “No Choice But to Deny Who I Am”: Violence and Discrimination Against LGBT People in Ghana (Human Rights Watch Report, 2018).
52 Nikolas, O’Malley, and Valverde, “Governmentality.”
53 “About Us.” n.d. COC – International. Accessed July 31, 2022. https://international.coc.nl/about-us/.
54 “Our Vision.” n.d. COC – International. Accessed July 31, 2022. https://international.coc.nl/theory-of-change/.
55 Rao, “Global Homocapitalism.”
56 Shaunak Sastry and Mohan Jyoti Dutta, “Global Health Interventions and the “Common Sense” of Neoliberalism: A Dialectical Analysis of PEPFAR,” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 6, no. 1 (2013): 34.
57 Otu, “Normative Collusions and Amphibious Evasions.”
58 Shinsuke Eguchi, “Negotiating Hegemonic Masculinity: The Rhetorical Strategy of ‘Straight-Acting’ Among Gay Men,” Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 38, no. 3 (2009): 193–209.
59 Sylvia Tamale, ed. African Sexualities: A Reader (Nairobi: Fahamu/Pambazuka Press, 2011).
60 Hope Alliance Foundation, “The Act Right Handbook” (Unpublished Manuscript, December 23, 2018) Electronic file.
61 “Our Vision,” COC.
62 Soo Ah Kwon, Uncivil Youth: Race, Activism, and Affirmative Governmentality (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013). https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv123×7sz.
63 Godfried Asante. “‘Queerly Ambivalent’: Navigating Global and Local Normativities in Postcolonial Ghana,” in Queer Intercultural Communication: The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and across Differences, eds. Shinsuke Eguchi and Bernadette Marie Calafell (Washington DC: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), 157–78.
64 Ryan R. Thoreson, Transnational LGBT Activism: Working for Sexual Rights Worldwide (Minneapolis: UM Press, 2014), 3.
65 Hoad, African Intimacies.
66 Ibid.
67 James Ferguson, Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).
68 Current Health Expenditure Per Capita. Retrieved from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CD?end=2019&locations=GH&start=2000&view=chart
69 Lara, “Strategic Universalisms and Dominican LGBT Activist Struggles.”
70 Puar, Terrorist Assemblage.
71 Alastair Fraser, “Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers: Now Who Calls the Shots?,” Review of African Political Economy, 32 no 1 (2005): 317–40.
72 For an example of a scholar who argues that homophobic discourses models tend to come from elsewhere, see Meredith Weiss, “Prejudice Before Pride: Rise of an Anticipatory Countermovement,” in Global Homophobia, eds. Meredith Weiss and Michael Bosia (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2013).
73 Altman, “Rupture or Continuity?”
74 Natalie Oswin, “Decentering Queer Globalization: Diffusion and the ‘Global Gay,’” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24, no. 5 (2006): 13.
75 Karma R.Chávez, “Pushing Boundaries.”
76 Keguro Macharia, “On Being Area-Studied: A Litany of Complaint,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 22, no. 2 (2016): 189.
77 In other words, paying attention to culture as a site of meaning-making can reveal what empowerment means to subaltern groups and not the other way round. See Mohan Jyoti Dutta, “Culturally Centering Social Change Communication: Subaltern Critiques of, Resistance to, and Re-Imagination of Development,” Journal of Multicultural Discourses 13, no. 2 (2018): 87–104.
78 Jenna N. Hanchey, “Desire and the Politics of Africanfuturism,” Women's Studies in Communication 43, no. 2 (2020): 119–24.