Must la victime Be Feminine? Postcolonial Violence, Gender Ambiguity, and Homoerotic Desire in Sony Labou Tansi’s Je soussigné cardiaque

Abstract

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 soussigne 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 soussigne cardiaque , I will consider the specific queer Kongo context in Labou Tansi’s treatment of the gendered body.