The Power of the “Knowing Women”

Abstract

Serena Owusua Dankwa's remarkable book Knowing Women: Same-Sex Intimacy, Gender, and Identity in Postcolonial Ghana offers a refreshing perspective on the representation of same-sex intimacy in Africa. In her book, the author sets out to examine the complex ways in which women who are engaged in same-sex relationships (“knowing women,” in Dankwa's words) “appeal to same-sex passion and intimacy as a knowledge that is acquired through practice and invigorated by passing it on.”1 Dankwa shuns putting sexuality at the center of her analysis, instead emphasizing how the relations between “knowing women” are embedded in complex dynamics involving love, power, friendship, and the erotic.Over the last two decades, scholars from various disciplines have begun to throw into relief the issue of same-sex intimacy on the African continent. However, many of these scholarly contributions focus on humanitarian and global health issues, and almost none, at least in/on West Africa, on female same-sex intimacy. Hence, Dankwa's monograph marks a watershed in tackling an issue that has been only marginally addressed in the studies on similar topics in or on the continent so far. Moreover, her book highlights the fact that most of the studies realized in or on Ghana, as well as other parts of the continent, have centered on male same-sex intimacy. This may be explained, in large part, by the funding and programs available that target HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections. Women have been overlooked by many studies, as they are often wrongly considered at low risk regarding these diseases.2 For example, Knowing Women recounts the difficulties experienced by Stella Odamten, “a former group facilitator” of a human rights NGO (14–15), when she attempts to set up a “lesbian group” in order to advocate for gender and human rights in Ghana. Contrary to organizers of male homosexual associations that carry out HIV/AIDS prevention programs and can therefore provide jobs to their members, Stella struggled to find women who were willing to participate in her association.To describe the complex relationships between “knowing women” in Ghana, Dankwa purposely abstains from using Western categorization like “queer,” “lesbian,” and/or “bisexual.” These terms stem from a “coming-out” narrative and suppose a sexual identity that is not endorsed by the majority of Dankwa's female research participants (15). Furthermore, this decision shows once more the author's decolonial approach to portraying and documenting women who have same-sex intimacies on the pages of Knowing Women. Discourses about and practices and representations of same-sex intimacy (and, more broadly, sexuality) on the African continent hinge upon the complex intertwinement of the history of colonization, the process of globalization, and questions of religion, law, and gender.3Drawing on Binyavanga Wainana's YouTube video series,4 in which the Kenyan writer and activist encourages us to “free our imagination,” Dankwa reveals the creativity and dynamic energies inherent to queer and same-sex intimacy in Ghana. Regarding gender categorizations and the self-identification process, the book pinpoints how traditional Ghanaian terms, such as supi, can designate a friendship relationship, without sexual intimacy, as well as a relationship that incorporates an erotic dimension. In this sense, Dankwa's research reveals that this traditional Ghanaian notion carries multiple meanings and appears to be conceived in various ways by women according to their age and generation. While young women are more likely to acknowledge the erotic aspect in their relationship with their supi, Dankwa notes, nowadays young women do not use the term supi to describe their same-sex relationship. Instead, they speak about same-sex intimacy through allusion and evocation. This demonstrates the difficulty of translating Western analytical notions to other foreign social and cultural contexts. Likely, it also illustrates the fluidity and evolution of gender categories within a same society, in this case the Ghanaian one.Dankwa's description of the struggle experienced by Stella Odamten led me to wonder how the development of LGBTQ+ associations across the continent influences the process of gender identification of knowing women in Ghana. The author conducted her fieldwork from 2006 to 2012 in Ghana's capital, Accra, and a “medium-sized town” that she refers to as “Suakrom” (14). In the latter, wealthy female traders stand alongside female soccer players from poor economic backgrounds. However, the variety of these research participants raises several questions related to gender identification. Do wealthier knowing women in Ghana, who probably have more possibilities to preserve their intimacy, experience their relationships with other “knowing women” in manners similar to the less wealthy? Considering that only one of Dankwa's respondents had a tertiary education, do female participants with a higher education level, especially those who can travel outside of Ghana, share the same reserve toward Western gender categorizations? Given that globalization not only implies the “increasing of transnational mobility” of people, capital, technologies, or discourses but also transforms the “sexual politics and cultures of many nation states,”5 how does globalization affect discourses and practices around same-sex practices in Ghana and, more broadly, in Africa? Nowadays, there is an increase in LGBTQ+ networks across the continent that influence gender perception, as well as political and social claims in many African countries. However, by bringing to the fore the voice of those “knowing women,” many living in precarious conditions, Dankwa sheds light on a class of people that is often made invisible and dismissed in many studies on same-sex intimacy.6The focus on “African[s] who engage in same-sex intimacies without claiming a specific sexual identity” (25) ultimately requires decolonizing queer theories. Hence, the author remarks that the attention on the process of “coming out” in many works from the global North is not often transposable in African contexts. However, global North representations of queerness and same-sex intimacy still operate as “a regulatory script.”7 Many queer scholars and activists from the global North tend to reproduce similar problematic visions of “hegemonic Western feminisms” and portray “third world” women as victims to be saved.8 Such narratives contribute to an essentialization of the global South, but also reiterate racial and colonial stereotypes. Similarly, African “queer” people are often perceived as those to be saved from “homophobic Africa.”9 Dankwa refers to the criticism against what Joseph Massad calls the “Gay International,” that is to say major LGBTQ+ associations from the global North that tend to homogenize discourses on homosexuality. Massad argues that the Gay International “assumes prediscursively that homosexuals, gays, and lesbians are universal categories that exist everywhere in the world, and based on this prediscursive axiom, the Gay International sets itself the mission of defending them by demanding that their rights as ‘homosexuals’ be granted where they are denied and be respected where they are violated.”10This being said, advocating for a “de-homogenization” of queer theories does not entail being blind about the increase in homophobic discourses and deeds in several African countries.11 However, works such as Dankwa's contribute to show the diversity of practices, representations, and self-identifications that epitomize same-sex intimacy. By offering alternative histories that decentralize the perception of what same-sex intimacy means, Dankwa's analysis not only enables the building up a new African queer “archive” and “method,”12 but also “render[s] African queers visible and foreground[s] their agency.”13Taking into consideration the norms of silence surrounding sexuality, and especially same-sex intimacy, Dankwa explores the difficulties that she encountered in finding female interlocutors who were willing to talk about their relationships with other female partners. Referring to the importance of discretion in Ghana, the author describes how she approached “knowing women,” by first questioning subjects about their ideas of friendship and then, when possible, the erotic dimension in their relationships with other women. The interdiction around same-sex intimacy forced Dankwa to adapt her methodology to this particular field of research. In her own words, she explains such difficulty: “The only way to appropriately broach my research subject therefore was through indirection. My approach was thus informed by the indirect ways in which sexuality in Ghana has been dealt with historically, by the current antigay discourse, and not least by the strategies of my key respondents, who could often deter me from making plain my research interest” (6). Regarding the ways she decides to transcribe the voice of her respondents, Dankwa draws on Abu-Lughod's notion of the “ethnographies of the particular.”14 This notion allows Dankwa, a Swiss-Ghanaian scholar, to reflect on her own positionality within the field, by interrogating how her presence and life history can influence her perception of the social issues being studied as well as those of her respondents. The “ethnography of the particular” enables one to not flatten out the differences but rather aim to “document lived experiences through the process of generating life hi/stories” (7).Working on literary fictional productions, I found particularly important how Dankwa emphasizes the central role of bridging several life trajectories in her research. Certainly, the vicissitudes portrayed in Dwanka's book, mediated by her own perspective, differ from those in fiction and literature. However, in the end, both aim to tell stories. In Ghana, as in other African countries, narration has always been used to speak about several taboo subjects, including same-sex intimacy.15 As such, narration could be perceived as a strategy to reclaim agency.16 For instance, analyzing the musical, filmic, and literary productions of queer people in Kenya, Adriaan Van Klinken highlights how narration can serve the development of an “artivism,”17 and/or a “sexual citizenship.”18 The “knowing women” interviewed by Dankwa do not necessarily share this political agenda. Therefore, by using narration and introducing their histories, Dankwa offers an image of the everyday life of many women, as well as men, who are engaged in same-sex relationships, without subscribing to any political claims. Here, I refer to the notion of imagination. In the process of decolonizing or decentralizing the view on same-sex intimacy, the use of personal narratives supports the flourishing of other imaginaries about same-sex intimacy in Africa. As Felwine Sarr put it: “Societies first and foremost establish themselves through their imaginaries.”19 Therefore, the image of a reality that for many is a taboo can be the means through which other representations of the society become possible.Another important aspect explaining the difficulty of interviewing “knowing women” in Ghana is the legal prohibition of same-sex practices in the country. Rather than providing a static representation of the condemnation of homosexuality in Africa, Dankwa refrains from perceiving homophobia in Africa as a single story. She addresses the complex, entangled histories at stake when it comes to understanding the current wave of homophobia in Ghana. Hence, she underlines that, as in many other African countries, the public condemnation of same-sex intimacy became more pronounced in the 1990s through media as well as the appearance of new religious groups. Regarding religion, the book reminds us that Ghana counts the highest percentage of Christians in West Africa. Drawing on the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, Dankwa points out how the increasing of a certain anxiety toward same-sex sexuality is concomitant with the rise of Neo-Pentecostalism, a movement within evangelical Protestant Christianity in the United States, called Charismatic Christianity in Ghana. Although minorities, these groups have succeeded in changing the religious practices and discourses in Ghana. While mentioning the impact of these new religious groups on the representation of same-sex intimacy, the book fittingly pinpoints how these new religious discourses are embedded in broader economic and political changes. Furthermore, Dankwa also shows the opposition that might exist between official public discourses that condemn same-sex sexualities and the everyday practices of religious priests and pastors. For example, she refers to a young female researcher who was engaged in same-sex relationships and confesses it to a pastor, who instead of condemning such practices, suggested that she not do it so openly.Referring to the memory of an elderly woman living in Accra, Dankwa shares that before the emergence of the new religious discourse previously mentioned, there might have been same-sex weddings celebrated by Christian pastors in the early 1990s (57). Several studies conducted on the continent already mentioned the existence of “woman-woman marriages” in many traditional African settings.20 The idea that such unions involved sexual intercourse has spurred many debates among scholars.21 In the examples brought by Dankwa, it is interesting to notice that the marriage of the elderly woman in Accra was celebrated by Christian pastors. The evocation of this Christian marriage provides another perspective on the multiplicity of religious discourses, same-sex intimacy, and the existing discrepancy between official condemnations and everyday destigmatizing practices in various African regions and Ghana. Regarding this point, several studies on the continent have demonstrated that queer people can use religion to empower themselves despite social, political, and religious homophobic contexts.22 Nowadays, we also see the emergence of new African churches that advocate for LGBTQ+ rights.23 In his research, Van Klinken rightly affirms that even though many queer Africans today adhere to religious beliefs and engage in religious activities, many studies continue to overlook the religious questions regarding same-sex intimacy. He relates this to the ways that “Western” queer theories have represented religion as mostly “heteronormative” and “oppressive” dogmatic entities.24 However, as Dankwa notes, “Many LGBTQ Africans engage in Christian or Islamic religious practices and find ways to assert and acknowledge their normative sexual and gender identities within those traditions, and to claim those traditions as sites of LGBT activism and queer politics.”25 In Knowing Women, Dankwa mentions the religious practices of one of her LGBTQ respondents, Adi Cortey, who “professes to go to the mosque five times daily” (184). Although Dankwa interviewed women of various religious backgrounds, the majority of her research participants were Christian. I wish Dankwa had expanded more on the ways “knowing women” navigate and make sense of their relationships with other female partners through the lens of their religious beliefs. For instance, Rudolph Gaudio coined the term faithful irreverence to describe how the Yan daudu, or feminine men in Nigeria, express what it means to be Hausa and Muslim.26 Among the women interviewed, did Dankwa observe such “faithful irreverence”? Or did the religious beliefs and practices of these women take other forms?My intention in this short essay has been to uncover some crucial themes tackled in Dankwa's book, as I consider them crucial for future studies on same-sex intimacy and similar topics in Africa. The book brilliantly opens the space for discussion about female same-sex intimacy, a subject of research that unfortunately remains marginal in scholarship. Through the presentation of these entangled histories, Knowing Women: Same-Sex Intimacy, Gender, and Identity in Postcolonial not only deconstructs the prejudices that one may have about such a topic, but also liberates our imagination about same-sex intimacy in Ghana and more generally in Africa. Imagination epitomizes a living form of empowerment for the many Ghanaian women who navigate their sexual and intimate desires in hostile global worlds.