Frontiers and pioneers in (the study of) queer experiences in Africa: Introduction

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Periodical article

Title:	Frontiers and pioneers in (the study of) queer experiences in Africa: Introduction
Authors:	Spronk, Rachel Nyeck, S.N.
Year:	2021
Periodical:	Africa: Journal of the International African Institute (ISSN 0001-9720)
Volume:	91
Issue:	3
Pages:	388-397
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Africa
Subjects:	homosexuality LGBT sexuality
External link:	https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972021000231
Abstract:	This part issue of the journal Africa broadly explores the idea of frontiers and pioneers in the study of queer African lives. We envisage frontiers as exploring new openings in the study of sexuality by putting forward the practices and experiences of people across the African continent. We propose to study queerness as part of broader quotidian realities so as to further theorize the study of sexualities and queerness. We propose the term 'pioneer' for the interlocutors in our studies: (self-identifying) women, men and queerying persons who courageously explore contradictory paths in their various contexts. As such, we encourage an imaginative employment of queer as indicating a horizon of curiosity and imprecision. In making queerness not an object of study but rather a subject of its own theorization based on everyday experience, this special journal issue explicitly and deliberately asserts the vernacular and the mundane as a locus of knowledge.