Queer objects to the rescue : intimacy and citizenship in Kenya / George Paul Meiu.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Meiu, George Paul, author.

Contributor:

George Clapp Vaillant Book Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Homophobia--Kenya.

Homophobia.

Homosexuality--Kenya.

Homosexuality.

Material culture--Social aspects--Kenya.

Material culture.

Masculinity--Kenya.

Masculinity.

Sex--Political aspects--Kenya.

Sex.

Citizenship--Kenya.

Citizenship.

Material culture--Social aspects.

Sex--Political aspects.

Kenya.

Physical Description:

230 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Other Title:

Intimacy and citizenship in Kenya

Place of Publication:

Chicago, IL ; London : The University of Chicago Press, [2023]

Summary:

"Campaigns calling on police and citizens to purge their countries of homosexuality have taken hold across the world. But the "homosexual threat" they claim to be addressing is not always easy to identify. To make that threat visible, leaders, media, and civil society groups have deployed certain objects as signifiers of queerness. In Kenya, bead necklaces, plastics, and diapers more generally have come to represent the danger posed by homosexual behavior to an essentially "virile" construction of national masculinity. In Queer Objects to the Rescue, George Paul Meiu explores objects that have played an important and surprising role in both state-led and popular attempts to rid Kenya of homosexuality. Meiu shows that their use in the political imaginary has been crucial to representing the homosexual body as a societal threat and as a target of outrage, violence, and exclusion, while also crystallizing anxieties over wider political and economic instability. To effectively understand and critique homophobia, Meiu suggests, we must take these objects seriously, and recognize them as potential sources for new forms of citizenship, intimacy, resistance, and belonging"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Queer objects : introduction

Intimate rescue : grammars, logics, subjects, scenes

"Male-power" : virility, vitality, and phallic rescue

Bead necklaces : encompassment and the geometrics of citizenship

Plastics : moral pollution and the matter of belonging

Diapers : intimate exposures and the underlayers of citizenship

The homosexual body : gayism and the ambiguous objects of terror

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the George Clapp Vaillant Book Fund.

ISBN:

9780226830582

9780226830568

022683056X

0226830586

OCLC:

1373015765

Publisher Number:

99995517959