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Must La Victime Be Feminine?: Postcolonial Violence, Gender Ambiguity, and Homoerotic Desire in Sony Labou Tansi’s Je soussigné cardiaque
- Research in African Literatures
- Indiana University Press
- Volume 44, Number 1, Spring 2013
- pp. 1-18
- 10.2979/reseafrilite.44.1.1
- Article
- Additional Information
The compelling nature of the recent dialogue between queer studies and postcolonial African literatures results, in part, from a contestation of the taboo of a queer Africa. Yet queerness is crucial to African literatures because so many of the cosmologies that inform these texts depend on gender-bending and intersexuality, and because in these texts, stepping outside of sexual and gender norms suggests political movement. This essay explores queerness as a driving force within African postcolonial literature through a reading of Congolese author Sony Labou Tansi’s 1981 play Je soussigné cardiaque. A queer reading of this play begins an exploration of male homoeroticism disguised in postcolonial African texts as heterosexual economies and provides a consideration of how men display political capital through gender bending. Further, in my reading of Je soussigné cardiaque, I will consider the specific queer Kongo context in Labou Tansi’s treatment of the gendered body.