Examining the tensions between queer desire, non-normative gendered identities, and pseudo-traditional cultural practices in Masande Ntshanga’s The Reactive (2016) and Mohale Mashigo’s The Yearning (2017)

ABSTRACT

Masande Ntshanga’s The Reactive (2016) and Mohale Mashigo’s The Yearning (2017) explore the tensions between queer desire, non-normative gendered identities, and pseudo-traditional cultural practices. Queer desire in The Reactive subverts binary oppositions to celebrate non-normative sexualities as a part of tradition. Luthando disrupts hetero-patriarchal masculinist traditionalism. Yet, Lindanathi’s traditionalist performance of Xhosa male circumcision (ulwaluko) is also the site of “righting” sexuality in the novel. The Yearning similarly addresses the negative tenets of traditionalist masculinity but, through female initiation rituals into womanhood (lebollo) and the call to become a traditional healer or sangoma (ukuthwasa). Mashigo’s novel presents silence as subversion to show how matriarchal structures exist and flourish within patriarchy co-existing in a relationship committed to continuity and community. These subversions suggest that the collective is embedded in the individual and offer a way to reframe “manhood” premised on notions of personhood as community.

KEYWORDS:

• Queer desire
• non-normative gendered identity
• pseudo-tradition
• sexuality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Magadla and Chitando, “Self Become God.”

² Mbembe, “African Modes”; Ratele, “Masculinities without Tradition.”

³ Andrews, “Emergence of black queer”; Mbembe, “African Modes”; Moletsane, “Culture, Nostalgia, and Sexuality”; Ouzgane and Morrell, African Masculinities.

⁴ Ratele, “Masculinities without Tradition,” 136.

⁵ Amadiume, Male Daughters; Tamale, Decolonization, 101.

⁶ Ratele, “Masculinities without Tradition,” 145; Butler, Undoing Gender, 30.

⁷ Magadla and Chitando, “Self Become God,” 190.

⁸ Tamale, Decolonization; Ratele, “Masculinities without Tradition.”

⁹ Mfecane, “’Ndiyindoda’”; Moletsane, “Culture, Nostalgia, and Sexuality”; Ndangam, “’Lifting the Cloak.’”

¹⁰ Frenkel, “Post-liberation Temporalities”.

¹¹ Ibid., 77.

¹² Ntshanga, Reactive, 198.

¹³ Buxbaum, “Risking intimacy,” 533.

¹⁴ Buxbaum, “Risking intimacy”; Ntshanga, Yearning, 141.

¹⁵ Buxbaum, “Risking intimacy,” 533.

¹⁶ Mfecane, “Ndiyindoda.”

¹⁷ Vincent, “Boys will be boys,” 443–40.

¹⁸ Dlamini, “Transformation of Masculinity,” 45.

¹⁹ Ntshanga, Reactive, 140.

²⁰ Epprecht, Hungochani; Stobie, “He uses my body”; Butler, Undoing Gender; Foucault, History of Sexuality.

²¹ Ntshanga, Reactive, 3.

²² Dlamini, “Transformation of Masculinity,” 41–9.

²³ Amadiume, Male Daughters, 185.

²⁴ Ratele, “Masculinities without Tradition,” 143.

²⁵ Ntshanga, Reactive, 140.

²⁶ Dlamini, “Transformation of Masculinity,” 58.

²⁷ Ndangam, “Lifting the Cloak,” 221; Dlamini, “Transformation of Masculinity,” 54.

²⁸ Butler, Undoing Gender, 21.

²⁹ Ntshanga, Reactive, 161; Butler, Undoing Gender.

³⁰ Ntshanga, Reactive, 161.

³¹ Butler, Undoing Gender, 30.

³² Ibid.

³³ Dlamini, “Metamorphosis of Xhosa,” 45.

³⁴ Butler, Undoing Gender, 30; Ratele, “Masculinities without Tradition,” 141.

³⁵ Ratele, “Masculinities without Tradition,” 145, 152.

³⁶ Butler, Undoing Gender, 217.

³⁷ Butler, Undoing Gender; Hlongwane and Mtshali, “Mentoring, masculinity”; Moletsane, “Culture, Nostalgia, Sexuality”; Jacobs, “Young South Africans.”

³⁸ Dlamini, “Transformation of Masculinity,” 45; Ratele, “Masculinities without Tradition,” 145.

³⁹ Ntshanga, Reactive, 151.

⁴⁰ Butler, Undoing Gender.

⁴¹ Nnaemeka, (M)Othering, 4.

⁴² Jacobs, “Young South Africans,” 2.

⁴³ Mfecane, “Ndiyindoda,” 212.

⁴⁴ Hitchcock, “The Eye and the Other,” 71.

⁴⁵ Ibid.

⁴⁶ Ntshanga, Reactive, 159.

⁴⁷ Nnaemeka, (M)Othering, 4.

⁴⁸ Ntshanga, Reactive, 160.

⁴⁹ Vincent, “Boys will be boys,” 441–44.

⁵⁰ Ntshanga, Reactive, 160–1 (my italics).

⁵¹ Ibid.

⁵² Williams, cited in Grosz, Volatile Bodies, 199.

⁵³ Grosz, Volatile Bodies, 200.

⁵⁴ Ntshanga, Reactive, 124.

⁵⁵ Epprecht, “Gender and Sexuality,” 129.

⁵⁶ Grosz, Volatile Bodies, 14.

⁵⁷ Van der Vlies, Present Imperfect, 161.

⁵⁸ hooks, Ain’t I a Woman.

⁵⁹ Barnard, Apartheid and Beyond, 7.

⁶⁰ Ntshanga, Reactive, 148–9; hooks, Ain’t I a Woman.

⁶¹ Ntshanga, Reactive, 148–9.

⁶² Ibid.

⁶³ hooks, Ain’t I a Woman, 76, 93.

⁶⁴ Ibid., 88.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 20.

⁶⁶ hooks, Ain’t I a Woman, 103; Ntshanga, Reactive, 148; Nnaemeka, (M)Othering.

⁶⁷ hooks, Ain’t I a Woman, 88–9.

⁶⁸ Selvick, “Beyond the binary,” 279.

⁶⁹ Ntshanga, Reactive, 139.

⁷⁰ Ibid.

⁷¹ Butler, Undoing Gender, 42.

⁷² Mbembe, “African Modes”, 26; Geschiere, “Belonging”, 28.

⁷³ Butler, Undoing Gender, 43.

⁷⁴ Ntshanga, Reactive, 161.

⁷⁵ Xaso, “Meaning of Ukuthwasa,” 18.

⁷⁶ Stobie, “He Uses My Body,” 150.

⁷⁷ Nkabinde and Morgan, “This has happened”; Stobie, “He Uses My Body”; Xaso, “The Meaning of Ukuthwasa,” 2.

⁷⁸ Mashigo, Yearning, 1.

⁷⁹ Stobie, “‘He Uses My Body’”.

⁸⁰ Nnaemeka, (M)Othering, 2.

⁸¹ Ibid., 181.

⁸² Padmanabhanunni et al, “Menstruation”, 705.

⁸³ Mashigo, Yearning, 182.

⁸⁴ Nnaemeka, (M)Othering.

⁸⁵ Ibid., 4.

⁸⁶ Mashigo, Yearning, 183, 57.

⁸⁷ Mashigo, Yearning, 3.

⁸⁸ Ibid., 182–3.

⁸⁹ Nnaemeka, (M)Othering, 13.

⁹⁰ Ibid.

⁹¹ Mashigo, Yearning, 179.

⁹² Ibid.

⁹³ Ibid.

⁹⁴ Mashigo, Yearning, 179; Amadiume, Male Daughters.

⁹⁵ Mashigo, Yearning, 179.

⁹⁶ Amadiume, Male Daughters.

⁹⁷ Mashigo, Yearning, 148, 177.

⁹⁸ Ibid., 158.

⁹⁹ Stratton, Contemporary African, 53.

¹⁰⁰ Amadiume, Reinventing Africa, 24.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., 151.

¹⁰² Mashigo, Yearning, 146.

¹⁰³ Ibid.

¹⁰⁴ Stratton, Contemporary African Literature, 7, 15; Mashigo, Yearning, 146.

¹⁰⁵ Mashigo, Yearning, 146.

¹⁰⁶ Amadiume, Reinventing Africa, 24.

¹⁰⁷ Mashigo, Yearning, 146.

¹⁰⁸ Mashigo, Yearning, 1.

¹⁰⁹ Nnaemeka. (M)Othering.

¹¹⁰ Ibid., 5.

¹¹¹ Ibid., 6.

¹¹² Ibid., 5.

¹¹³ Mashigo, Yearning, 144.

¹¹⁴ Praeg, Report on Ubuntu, xiii. Ubuntu, as Leonhard Praeg explains, has been “reappropriated and reinvented by Africans as both a sign of authenticity and the building block for emancipation” conceived, in part, through processes of nationalism and of re-enchanting tradition in post-apartheid South Africa. Leonhard Praeg explains that ubuntu can be framed in terms of a “critical humanism” where “the ‘human’ is the secondary concept” and “a more fundamental or primary concern is with the relations of power that systematically exclude certain people from being included in the first instance” (Ibid., 12, 63).

¹¹⁵ Magadla and Chitando, “Self Become God,” 177.

¹¹⁶ Ibid.

¹¹⁷ Mashigo, Yearning, 185, 1.

¹¹⁸ Nnaemeka, (M)Othering; Amadiume, Reinventing Africa.

¹¹⁹ Magadla and Chitando, “The Self Become God,” 184.

¹²⁰ Ibid., 183.

¹²¹ Magadla and Chitando, “The Self Become God,” 185; Ratele, “Masculinities without Tradition”; Butler, Undoing Gender.

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Amy Lisa Duvenage

Amy Lisa Duvenage teaches within the School of Social Sciences, Psychology and Education at Solent University, Southampton. Her research focuses on gender and queer theory, and representations of masculinity and femininity in literature.