Incredible, libidinal, strange: African queer studies and Tejumola Olaniyan’s legacies

Abstract

This article gives an account of Tejumola Olaniyan’s under-appreciated role in supporting the emergence of the field of queer African literary studies, and provides a provisional historiography and bibliography of that field. The article then reads Olaniyan’s work, in particular Arrest The Music! Fela and His Rebel Art and Politics, through a queer lens. Olaniyan’s examination of the “strange” relationship between the African state, its rebels, and its subjects, across his archive, and his nuanced discussion of transgression and norm—“libidinal” and otherwise—offers rich intellectual potential for African queer studies, and queer studies at large.