Queer Objects to the Rescue - Intimacy and Citizenship in Kenya

"Campaigns calling on police and citizens to purge their countries of homosexuality have taken hold across the world. But the "homosexual threat" they claim to be addressing is not always easy to identify. To make that threat visible, leaders, media, and civil society groups have deployed certain objects as signifiers of queerness. In Kenya, bead necklaces, plastics, and diapers more generally have come to represent the danger posed by homosexual behavior to an essentially "virile" construction of national masculinity. In Queer Objects to the Rescue, George Paul Meiu explores objects that have played an important and surprising role in both state-led and popular attempts to rid Kenya of homosexuality. Meiu shows that their use in the political imaginary has been crucial to representing the homosexual body as a societal threat and as a target of outrage, violence, and exclusion, while also crystallizing anxieties over wider political and economic instability. To effectively understand and critique homophobia, Meiu suggests, we must take these objects seriously, and recognize them as potential sources for new forms of citizenship, intimacy, resistance, and belonging"--

About the author

George Paul Meiu is professor of anthropology at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He is the author of Ethno-erotic Economies, published by The University of Chicago Press.

Product details

• Authors: George Paul Meiu
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.12.2023
• EAN: 9780226830568
• ISBN: 978-0-226-83056-8
• No. of pages: 240
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Pre and early history; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Men's Studies, Kenya, Gay & Lesbian studies, Of specific Gay interest, SOCIAL SCIENCE / LGBTQ+ Studies / Gay Studies, Relating to gay people, Gender studies: men and boys, Gender Studies: Men, LGBTQ+ Studies / topics