Queer Bodies in African Films

Queer Bodies in African Films makes two overarching interventions. First, the book focuses on how queer bodies in films are texts. As sites invested with multiple and often overlapping discourses and narratives, queer bodies in films textualise silenced narratives and histories. They are inscribed with more than just desire, eroticism and sexuality. Second, this book sets out to read selected queer films from North Africa against and together with some from sub-Saharan Africa. It bring into productive conversation these broad regions of the continent, which in African Studies, are often demarcated along linguistic and geographic lines. This makes it possible to demonstrate how queer bodies, in their multiplicity, are disruptive figures whose materiality calls for a rethinking of how gender and sexual identities are not just performed and staged but also constructed and embodied. 

In examining diverse films in various languages and from different parts of the African continent, Queer Bodies in Africa Films shows that queer African experiences and cultural productions have developed beyond the hegemony of South Africa. Furthermore. its nuanced reading of films from differen geographic zones and time frames contends that a focus on the body allows for a unique understanding of what queerness is and means within the context of Africa.

Reviewer’s Comments

This is an excellent book...It theorises queer and Africa in relation to each other and specifically considers bodies as texts. […] The specific strength of the book is that it creates an archive on how queer bodies are represented in African film, which is an extremely valuable contribution. […] It was an enjoyable and easy read, which is always a bonus for an academic book.
Grant Andrews, School of Education, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa 

The strength of the book is the author's expertise on North African cinema, which is a region often very overlooked in scholarship on queer Africa. The focus on the body is also unique.
Lindsey Green-Simms Department of Literature, American University, Washington DC, USA

Part of the African Humanities Series