Andy Carolin - Post-Apartheid Same-Sex Sexualities: Restless Identities in Literary and Visual Culture

Andy Carolin

First published 2021

by Routledge

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and by Routledge

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2021 Andy Carolin

The right of Andy Carolin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Carolin, Andy, author.

Title: Post-apartheid same-sex sexualities: restless identities in literary and visual culture/Andy Carolin.

Other titles: Gender in a global/local world.

Description: New York: Routledge, 2021. | Series: Gender in a global/local world | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020038173 (print) | LCCN 2020038174 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367467159 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003030577 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Homosexuality and the artsSouth Africa. | Homosexuality and literatureSouth Africa. | HomosexualitySocial aspectsSouth Africa. | South AfricaSocial conditions19942020

Classification: LCC NX180.H6 C37 2021 (print) | LCC NX180.H6 (ebook) | DDC 700.4538086640968dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038173

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038174

ISBN: 978-0-367-46715-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-03057-7 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Apex CoVantage, LLC

On 6 October 2012, a procession of gorgeous go-go boys, sponsored floats, and about 20,000 Joburg Pride revellers (sporting rainbow flags and corporate pink umbrellas) made its way down Jan Smuts Avenue in Johannesburg. The mood was jovial, almost blithe. But as the festivities continued down the street, a small group of predominantly black, lesbian women staged a die-in. These activists blocked the path of the procession using mannequins and their own seemingly lifeless bodies. Behind these protestors were banners that read Dying for justice and No cause for celebration. The anti-rape feminist organisation behind the protest sought to disrupt not only the physical movement of people along the designated route of the parade, but also the festive depoliticisation and exclusions that had come to characterise the spatial politics of Joburg Pride. The small group of protestors insisted that they wanted one minute of silence to draw attention to the culture of rape and violent assault against black, working-class, lesbian women. Theirs was also a protest against both the racialised exclusions enacted through Pride and the general apathy of its predominantly white, middle-class participants. However, as the swell of revellers moved closer to the site of the die-in, vitriol and violence ensued as some of the white marchers intimidated and attacked the black protestors. Demanding that the black women move out of the street, one of the white organisers of the parade shouted, This is my route, while another physically assaulted one of the black women. In an online video of the incident, white party-goers are heard shouting, Drive over them and instructing the black protestors to go back to your lokshins [locations] a word that evokes the racialisation of apartheids spatial planning. Though most of the ensuing online media fracas pointed to and blamed the structuring raciology of post-apartheid cultural life, I felt dissatisfied by this explanation. This seemed too easy, too obvious, and too insular. This explanation demanded too great a commitment to exceptionalism, and offered too little in the way of nuance. Of course, the racism and patriarchy rooted in our national consciousness might produce such divisions, but what else was at stake in this contestation over spatial visibility? What new connections and relationships would come into view if we read this conflict as a local instantiation of a global sexual politics? What are the broader transnational practices of inclusion and exclusion within sexual cultures, and how are they transformed when enacted in the streets of Johannesburg? How do historical routes of white privilege intersect with contemporary ones, and what does this mean for the ways in which images of gay men are produced and circulated? How does the historical transnational figure of the black female body mobilise new constituencies of affect, and how does her same-sex sexuality reproduce her vulnerability? What sort of same-sex public cultures are erased by these racially polarised protagonists? And, significantly, in what types of heteronormative cultures do such racial discourses play out, and who is invested in the outcome?