African Masculinity Research Articles

African theology of reconstruction and queer epistemic violence: A theo-ethical discourse

The legacies of colonialism in South Africa and broadly in Africa have problematised discourses on violence and discrimination. To counter coloniality and its continued efforts to dehumanise Africa, many Africans have often uncritically embraced certain notions of African culture that exacerbates the problem of homophobic violence and discrimination. This has left certain African discourses embracing ubuntu without critically addressing the violence and discrimination where ubuntu is often promoted. Recognising the attempts of African reconstruction theologians such as Mugambi and Ka Mana who advocate the necessity for African epistemic paradigms or epistemic justice, I engage their paradigms considering epistemic violence from the context of the queer community. Ubuntu must be understood within the context of African holism, a framework which African reconstruction theology makes use of. Using Dotson’s three orders of epistemic oppression, I argue that Mugambi’s theological paradigm could become problematic for the queer community because of the epistemic shells it carries into the future from the past. Considering the queer community, I argue that the epistemic flexibility of Ka Mana’s theology of reconstruction allows for more engagement because of its commitment to an ethic of African holism. At the heart of such an ethic is a commitment to the unity and the interconnectedness between God, humans, ancestors, plants and animals. This paper makes a theological contribution by engaging queer epistemic violence from the context of two African theological reconstruction paradigms.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This paper engages discourses from African masculinities, social sciences, African theology and philosophy with reference to epistemic violence enacted against the queer community.

‘Becoming manly’: white South African defence force veterans negotiating masculinity

ABSTRACT This study examines how white South African men reflect on their experiences of being and becoming army veterans, while negotiating masculinity. In the context of ‘high apartheid’, Afrikaner domination of the socio-political landscape, ethnic and racialised inequalities, the veterans negotiated being white English-speaking men through reflecting on, critiquing and disassociating from military masculinity. An English South African masculinity was upheld by distancing from Afrikaner domination and values, violence and compulsory heterosexuality. These findings suggest that while a military masculinity offered men a powerful template to assert their authority as white men, such power was nuanced by English South Africans’ relative political impotence, the domination of Afrikaans as a language and illustrates the heterogeneity in the experience of white veteran masculinity under apartheid. At the same time, however, white English veterans were complicit in and benefitted from whiteness and the power accrued in the country by virtue of race, class and history of British colonialism. We argue that the experience of being and becoming conscripts and the reflection on military masculinity directs attention to the ways in which broader social and political contexts have effects for the shaping of masculinity reflecting hierarchies of power and fluidity.

Back in Youth: Social Unbecoming in the Study of West African Masculinities

African youth became a central research theme in anthropology and related disciplines in the early 2000s, drawing renewed attention to the lives and aspirations of a segment of the continent's population that, since the independence era, has become increasingly demographically dominant but socially and politically marginalised. Reflecting on an extended case study of male ex-combatants in urban Burkina Faso, this paper offers a critical reading of the anthropological scholarship on African youth, emphasising, first, that much of this literature is most usefully read as studies of diverse (West) African masculinities and, second, that the literature has underplayed the extent to which achievements of social progression tend to be acutely reversible in contexts of precarity or radical social change, throwing the unfortunate, as it were, back in youth.

Real Men Do Good Sex: Black South African Masculinities in Men's Clinic International Adverts

This article focuses on the representations of black masculinities in television advertisements for Men's Clinic International, a popular franchise of clinics in South Africa that specialises in men's sexual and reproductive health. It explores the ideological assumptions underlying the various constructions of manhood portrayed in the adverts in relation to men's sexual health. Three interconnected themes emerged from the analysis of the texts, namely the centrality of the phallic, masculinity as a sexual performance and the nature and representation of femininities. The article discusses how the adverts work to portray models of black masculinity and male sexuality in such a way that “true” manhood is framed as heterosexual, monogamous, intertwined with male vulnerabilities, performance-based and largely dependent on the female partner's sexual satisfaction.

Masculinities and the “colonial unconscious” in Shimmer Chinodya’s Dew in the Morning

This article examines the gendered dynamics surrounding masculinity and the “colonial unconscious” in Shimmer Chinodya’s novel, Dew in the Morning, in the context of its narrated and narrative times. These are situated in, and emanate from, the encounter between colonized black African subjects, namely migrants and indigenes, set apart by different degrees of assimilation of colonial modernity in an unnamed area in Northern Zimbabwe. The article argues that narration in the novel is mediated by a colonial unconscious that results in the discursive construction of binary dichotomies and masculinized hierarchies between these subjects. The empowerment of the migrant subjects mainly involves the appropriation of colonial modernity, and the “big man” model of African Masculinity, to inform their more profitable agrarian activities. The resultant differential economic empowerment between the migrant acculturated subjects and the local conservatives in a colonial setting creates hierarchies of masculinity between the former and the latter. The process of masculinization helps to reinforce patriarchal domination and/or exploitation of women, less powerful men, and the natural environment in this localized context. The narrative thus casts aspersions on the masculinities of both the migrants and the indigenes and their suitability to mediate the post-colonial realities of the novel’s narrative time.

‘Furnisht with such members as are after a sort burthensome unto them’: White Traveller Perceptions of Black Male Bodies and the Construction of Race, 1450–1730

AbstractThis article explores how European travellers to Africa perceived African masculinity, the male body and sexuality during the period of 1450–1730. It argues that their observations helped Europeans construct early notions of racial difference at a time when skin colour was not the most important marker of difference classifying people. It draws upon a range of European accounts of their voyages and encounters with Africans from 1450 to 1730. It mostly analyses English narratives, but it also examines Portuguese, Dutch and French accounts that were translated into English at the time and read by English audiences.

The Construction of Regional Masculinities as Drivers of Sexual Violence Against Women in Lesotho

ABSTRACT Sexual violence against women (SVAW) is a social problem that perseveres despite preventive efforts made at international, regional and national levels. In terms of research, very little has been covered on the comparative, diverse regional masculinities that drive men to sexually abuse women. This sociological study, therefore, focuses on the construction of regional masculinities that cause SVAW, with the study site being Maseru district of Lesotho. Qualitative data were gleaned utilizing four interview guides for 10 SVAW survivors, 10 perpetrators, 10 village chiefs and 10 police officers. The study adopted a qualitative interpretative approach and a phenomenology research design. Underpinning the study's theoretical framework was the masculinity framework. In rural areas of Lesotho, results revealed that the construction of regional masculinities as drivers of SVAW entails the following: misuse of traditional weapons such as koto, molamu and lebetlela and cultural practices such as ho ratha patsi and ho kenela. In urban areas, the drivers of SVAW include men as providers and protectors. This illustrates that certain specific but diverse forms of masculinities continue to heighten women’s vulnerabilities to sexual violence. This study argues that various masculinity traits that are intended to exhibit manhood intentionally or unintentionally manifest into SVAW. This study is envisaged to broaden the masculinity framework by bringing in the context of the Sotho culture and urban/rural diversity in exploring the nexus between regional masculinities and SVAW. This study contributes to the scholarship on African masculinities.

Hustler Masculinity in the Nigerian E-fraud Novel

This article identifies the figure of the e-fraud hustler as a contemporary iteration of an African discourse of masculinity. Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani's I Do Not Come to You by Chance and Chuma Nwokolo's Diaries of a Dead African represent men's engagement in the e-fraud hustle as a neoliberal gamble to monetize their masculinity. As men's pecuniary agency is threatened and limited by the vagaries of neoliberal capitalism, it is equally mediated by yet another paradigm of neoliberal capitalist ideology, namely, (the criminal redefinition of) entrepreneurship. To be a man thus necessitates an ever-shifting performance of terminal and complicit masculinity, a paradoxical development in which men take risks to circumvent economic exclusion by imitating the expediencies of neoliberal capitalism. The novels register this money-governed sense of masculinity through gender discourses and narrative strategies that resist fixed constructions of African masculinity in favor of an ever-vigilant logic of its contingency and plurality.

African Masculinities in the Workings of Racial Capitalism

African Masculinities in the Workings of Racial Capitalism

Constructing Nigerian Manhood: Gender Symbols and Tropes in Children’s Narratives

This paper examines the representation of masculinity in Nigerian children's literature, focusing on how gender symbols and tropes shape perceptions ofNigerian manhood. The study delves into children's narratives to analyze the sociocultural construction of masculinity, highlighting the impact of these representations on the masculinization of the Nigerian male and broader gender politics. The analysis concentrates on three primary symbolic categories: the male body, sexuality, and agriculture, exploring how these elements contribute to the construction of traditional archetypes of Nigerian manhood. By examining how these symbols glorify strength, virility, and prowess and perpetuate a rigid gender hierarchy, the paper discusses the implications of such representations for gender politics in Nigeria. The glorification of physical dominance, sexual prowess, and specific agricultural practices reinforces traditional masculine ideals and contributes to the marginalization of those who do not conform to these standards. The paper underscores the need for alternative representations in children's literature that challenge these restrictive norms and promote a more nuanced understanding of masculinity in Nigerian society. This study aims to contribute to the evolving discourse on Nigerian and African masculinities, particularly in the context of children's literature, and calls for more intersectional approaches to further explore and transform gender dynamics.

Lovers not fighters: Afropolitan masculinity in two South African romcoms

This paper considers two South African romantic comedies, Tell Me Sweet Something (Akin Omotoso, 2015) and Happiness is a Four-Letter Word (Thabang Moleya, 2016). Both are set in a wealthy, sophisticated version of Johannesburg and feature black casts that include high profile celebrities. Both emphasize versions of black South African masculinity that deviate from stereotyped depictions of black men as workers, warriors, patriarchs and/or enactors of violence. These films center on an aspirational iteration of black manhood that prioritizes consumption, class and social status. I discuss their representations of the various male characters – Nat in Sweet Something and Thomas, Chris, Bheki, Bongani and Leo in Happiness – including their bodily performances, embeddedness (or lack of) in South African cultural forms and modes of dress and speech. Drawing on ideas about Afropolitanism, I argue that the films update cinematic stereotypes of masculinity, particularly the damaging association of black men and violence. This apparently progressive move is, however, ambivalent, as it privileges a neoliberal and one-dimensional understanding of black masculinity and of contemporary African-ness.

“I need to protect everyone”

Abstract This article examines violent masculinity and locates this performative identity within ethnic conflict and African masculinity literature. Analysis focuses on the development of Congolese Banyamulenge soldiers’ masculine narratives and moral justifications of violence. The article responds to this question: what is Banyamulenge violent masculinity, and how has it developed? The process of how Banyamulenge masculinity evolved in response to perceptions of threat, and elements of genocide are present. These men considered themselves the final protectors of Tutsis regionally and in the Congo, deploying a degree of exceptionalism. Using narrative analysis, this article engages the above literature and original fieldwork interviews with Banyamulenge soldiers and political actors. The concept of violent masculinity addresses the masculinity gap of broader ethnic conflict literature. This article also offers a significant empirical contribution in terms of Banyamulenge involvement in local and regional conflicts. Violent masculinity evolved as a Banyamulenge practice, whilst being embedded in traditional structures.

Spatial Encounters: African Migrant Masculinities and Gendered Geographies of Power in Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears

This article focuses on Dinaw Mengestu's representation of African migrant masculinities within the American space in The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. By paying attention to the gendered nature of the American space, histories, and political and economic cultures, I argue that American foundational mythologies and metanarratives act as repertoires that shape marginal African masculinities' imagination and the embodied experience of the American space. In reading African migrant masculinities' navigation of commercial and corporate America, this article takes heed of the materiality, corporeality, and the governmentality of space and examines how space produces and shapes sociality. Ultimately, the examination of African masculinities' use and access to the American space enables an interrogation of gendered experiences of migration, African masculinities within global modernity, and the reimagining of ethical and egalitarian horizons of racial and political relations.

Power, Belonging, and Respectability

Power, Belonging, and Respectability

Destiny Man: Black Middle Class Masculinities in South Africa, a Discourse Analysis

ABSTRACT The following article provides a systematic multimodal analysis of the South African men’s publication Destiny Man. Articles published in the 2014 issues of the magazine were selected for an in-depth discussion of how factors such as access to economic resources and wealth play a significant role in lifestyle choices and the formation of the black middle-class in contemporary South Africa. Advertisements were analysed to further enrich the discussion in the paper. The findings indicate that Destiny Man’s characterisation of middle-class black South African masculinity is based on the acquisition of material goods, the ability to provide for one’s family and perceptions of power which are based on business transactions and socioeconomic empowerment—all rooted in a new culture of neoliberal capitalism penetrating sections of the South African population. This analysis alerts readers to the formation of a neoliberal capitalist culture as a major theme in Destiny Man magazine.

De-problematizing masculinity among heterosexual African, Caribbean, and Black male youth and men

ObjectivesThe dominant discourse in literature often constructs heterosexual African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) masculinity as inherently problematic and in need of “correction, repair, or rescue.” This discourse privileges hegemonic male standards and conceals the power relations that shape racialized masculinities. Our study of self-identified heterosexual ACB men and male youth examines how performative and perceptual attenuations of hegemonic masculinity can moderate social and behavioural vulnerabilities in the context of HIV prevention, transmission, and survival.MethodsWe used descriptive qualitative methods informed by community-based participatory research. Individual in-depth interviews and focus group discussions were conducted with 63 ACB men and male youth (aged 16 and above) residing in Ottawa, Canada, including community leaders, HIV service providers, and decision makers. The interviews were transcribed verbatim, and thematically analyzed with NVivo software. Member-checking, peer debriefing, and external audit ensured trustworthiness of data.ResultsACB men and male youth define masculinity by their ability to provide for, protect, love, and lead their families. Within ACB cultures, men demonstrate their masculinity through their traditional role as family breadwinners, and are expected to be strong, bold, and responsible. This positive view of masculinity is potentially beneficial to the well-being of ACB men and male youth, and challenges mainstream notions of Black masculinity as uncontrolled, risky, toxic, or even predatory.ConclusionA positive view of masculinity among ACB heterosexual men and youth could support future practice and policy interventions aimed at strengthening community responses to HIV and health.

Everyday peacebuilding among Ghanaian men: ambiguities, resistances and possibilities

Dominant peacebuilding scholarship and praxis tends to focus on African men�s adherence to violent fragile masculinities in conflict prone-societies, and African masculinities are often approached, analysed, measured and theorised through externally derived standards and concepts. This article, by contrast, investigates the extent to which men can contribute to everyday peacekeeping. It does so by drawing on ethnographic interviews with men in northwestern Ghana. It illuminates how discourses and practices of male headship and breadwinner, as everyday masculine subjectivities, may contribute to creating fruitful possibilities for everyday peacebuilding subjectivities of men at the micro-levels. The article argues that approaching African masculinities through externally designed frameworks risks impoverishing critical understanding of the tensions, ambiguities, resistances and contestations of multiple configurations of masculinities beyond liberal, western-centric conceptualisations of masculinities. It further highlights that critical intervention seeking to address the systems and structures that may legitimise, and re/produce violence and social disorder must invest in carefully rethinking the everyday struggles of men within their locatedness. Peacebuilding scholars should invest in broadening discourses and representations of masculinities by offering nuanced understandings of how men can and are embracing peaceful and nonviolent masculinities in their everyday meaning-making.

Transforming African Masculinity: A Transnational Approach to Gender Justice in South Africa

AbstractInformed by ethnographic data gathered within a men’s organization working to achieve gender justice, prevent gender-based violence, and reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS in South Africa, this ...

Eastern African Literatures: Towards an Aesthetics of Proximity by Russell West-Pavlov

Reviewed by: Eastern African Literatures: Towards an Aesthetics of Proximity by Russell West-Pavlov Mahruba T. Mowtushi Eastern African Literatures: Towards an Aesthetics of Proximity BY RUSSELL WEST-PAVLOV Oxford UP, 2018. xix + 219 pp. ISBN 9780198745716 paper. Eastern African Literatures: Towards an Aesthetics of Proximity opens with the relentless rap rhythm of the Kenyan poet, journalist, and eponymous “literary gangster” Tony Mochama, whose work communicates a “politics of agency, community and connectiveness” (viii). For Russell West-Pavlov, Mochama’s gangster diction and performance exemplify what the book sets out to accomplish, called an “aesthetics of proximity,” by presenting a compelling diagnosis of the field of contemporary East African literary production. The book offers an exciting insight into East African literary and cultural history since at least the middle of the twentieth century by demonstrating a discerning command of the regional politics, identities, and (hi)stories extant in its literary landscape in English. In exploring how this literary landscape asserts a characteristic regional distinctiveness, the book invites us to appreciate the nuanced implications of “proximity” as an aesthetic category in “East African” writing in English. The book is divided into three parts that consider three definite but flexible understandings of the term “proximity” vis-à-vis East African literature in English. Each part is subdivided into three chapters. The first part, titled “Territories,” is devoted to the geopolitical categories of “Coast,” “Land,” and “Cities,” which interrogate how the region’s history and territorial immediacy have generated rich narratives of proximity. Land, ocean, and metropolises have been central literary issues in the region’s historical engagements with cartographic histories and post/modernist mappings of colonial cities and littoral zones. From looking at geopolitical proximities in part one, part two of the book, aptly titled, “Histories,” delineates the proximity of historical pasts and the various usages of the past in East African writings. [End Page 218] The second part is chronologically arranged around chapters that survey “Precolonial,” “Colonial,” and “Postcolonial Histories.” In particular, the chapter on “Colonial Histories” offers a compelling read on how anticolonial conflicts like the Maji-Maji Revolution and the Mau-Mau Rebellion, as well as post-independent nationalist projects, are variously appropriated in the fiction of the region to render these “usefully proximate to a post-independent national narrative” (xiii). The spatial and temporal renderings of proximity in parts one and two of the book pave the way for communal and relational proximities in part three. The third part, called “Communities,” calls attention to three axes of proximity by considering the role of “Gender,” cross-border “Migratory Identities,” and the trans-regional space of “Eastern Africa in the Global South” in its discussion of the region’s literary production. The chapter on “Gender” is especially illuminating for its attention to East African women’s generative agency explored through the fictional depictions of the topoi of feminist consciousness, sexuality, and maternal reproduction. The discussion revisits the much-debated issue of female circumcision (also labeled “genital mutilation” by its critics) as a signifier of the region’s patriarchal control through the works of Rebeka Njau, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and Nuruddin Farah. However, it is the chapter’s exploration of African masculinities, the regenerative possibilities inherent in East African feminine selfhoods, and LGBT self-assertions stressed by Susan Kiguli and other women writers that offer innovative and alternative forms of proximate selves evident in the region’s literary experimentations. Correspondingly, the chapter on migration is commendable for its evaluation of intra-regional migration and the movement of multi-ethnic peoples, as opposed to oceanic and intercontinental voyage that is nonetheless a crucial vector of the region’s historiography. If there is a critique to be made of West-Pavlov’s indispensable study, it is that it neglects to mention the role played by Asian-Ugandans, such as the poet and editor of Transition magazine, Rajat Neogy (1938–95), in the development of the region’s literary consciousness in the 1960s. As pointed out by Transition’s later editors, Anthony Appiah et al., in the aftermath of independence in Africa, intellectuals found Neogy’s magazine a powerfully provocative and stimulating platform from which to debate literary, artistic, and political issues of...

‘So Kuoↄ Kye Bϵ Yi’: disrupting constructions of masculinities among the Dagaaba of Northwestern Ghana

ABSTRACT In this article, our aim is to present an African-centered framework on how researchers interested in critical studies on African men and masculinities might think through and think from Africa in ways that might privilege a more nuanced reading and examining of gendered subjectivities in Africa. Drawing on interviews with young men in northwestern Ghana, this article offers an understanding of how young Dagaaba men and their masculinities could be better understood in relation to an emerging neoliberal rural culture. Young men in this study acknowledge the possibility of negotiating expressions of masculinities which are more progressive, while simultaneously remaining heavily invested in retaining certain behaviors, practices, and patriarchal structures which legitimize the currency of traditionally hegemonic masculinities. The article concludes that attempts seeking to deconstruct hegemonic masculinities must, first and foremost, appreciate the shifts and complexities of masculinities and the discursive materiality of acts of violence over time and space.