Queer Word- and World-Making in South Africa: Dignified Sounds (Theorizing Ethnography)

By: Taylor Riley

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Synopsis: Focusing on everyday experiences of sexuality in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, this book considers personal narratives and other queer artefacts to shed light on linguistic and performative strategies of resistance, referred to as queer word- and world-making. Questions of non-normative expressions of gender and sexuality in South Africa refer to the politics of words, and to their contested meanings and valuations reflected in the way that they roll off tongues. If sexualities are not merely acts, feelings, or identities, but embodiments of desires which invoke and influence social contexts, assumptions about sexuality as a realm of situated knowledge cannot be trusted at face-value. Taylor Riley considers the meanings coded in words used to depict same-sexualities and the productive silences which surround them, and how those meanings are embraced, altered, and resisted through labors of everyday existence. The volume sheds new light on and personalizes the highly contested meanings which surround queer life and LGBTI rights in South Africa. It will be of interest to scholars and upper-level students of anthropology, queer studies and African studies.