A Reflection on Gender and Sexuality as Transnational Archive of African Modernity

Sexual diversity on the African continent can no longer be ignored. This chapter discusses how to both recognize and theorize lived experiences of sexual and gender diversity on the African continent and its diaspora. It argues that we cannot reckon with the colonial past and its continuing traces in Africa and its diaspora until we reclaim sexual and gender diversity as part of the continent and its diaspora’s present. The chapter focuses upon how different kinds of silences surround the subject of women loving women in literary and cinematic representations. It also discusses another popular notion about same-sex sexuality in Africa: that it is a bad habit imported from the West. The chapter offers some insights into how to think about silence and gender by drawing on the short story “Rock” by Lindiwe Nkutha, published in Queer Africa: New and Collected Fiction , highlighting a reconsideration of gender fluidity as an emerging theme in African literature.