Queer Africa, Necropolitics, and the Decolonization of Dissident Sexualities and Genders

Abstract

The aim of this text is to reflect on the relevance of the categories of necropolitics and queer necropolitics as a key to understand the situation of sexual and gender minorities on the African continent. These analyses will be in large part based on contributions from African authors who have recently adopted a queer identity. From the perspective of queer of color and radical queer readings, the notions of necropolitics and queer necropolitics become relevant for understanding African queer situations, shifting attention away from discourses that only point to a local necropolitics attributed to state homophobia, anti-homosexuality legislation or religious fundamentalism, especially of a (neo)Pentecostal nature. The intervention of foreign and transnational NGOs, driven by a salvationist humanitarianism, imposes deadly logics of erasure, segmentation and invisibility that affect the lives and practices of African queer communities and subjectivities. The discussion on queer necropolitics thus raises the thorny question of whether certain people and certain sectors of the international LGBT community may no longer be pure victims of violence, but accomplices in the creation of “death worlds”.