Performing sexual citizenship in/from the borders
: contemporary queer Zimbabwean activisms

Student thesis: Doctoral ThesisDoctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Abstract

This thesis examines the political agency of queer Zimbabwean activists. It demonstrates how queer Africans are more than victims as they perform acts of citizenship which open the possibilities of more inclusive arrangements of substantive sexual citizenship. From an interpretive approach, it develops a discursive analysis of the narratives the activists articulate in and through digital artefacts, supplemented by qualitative digital interviews. Highlighting the entanglements between contemporary international politics of modernity/coloniality and discourses of sexual and gender deviance, I show how dominant discourses in the post-colonial state position queer Zimbabweans in the borderlands of belonging. Queer Zimbabwean activists disrupt those norms and dislocate the boundaries of citizenship by denouncing the ways in which they are othered, asserting their existence, and claiming their belonging as sexualized and gendered political agents in the polity which repudiates them. This research contributes to the fields of African queer studies, Zimbabwean citizenship, and enriches sexual and performative citizenship studies with an Afro-centric queer and decolonial perspective. It also queers citizenship beyond the binary citizen/non-citizen demonstrating this status is unstable and based in relational positions which can be simultaneously occupied.
Date of Award20 Jun 2023
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • University of Bristol
SponsorsFederal University of Paraíba & Funds for Women Graduates
SupervisorTerrell F Carver (Supervisor) & Egle Cesnulyte (Supervisor)

Keywords

  • sexual citizenship
  • performative citizenship
  • Zimbabwe
  • queer activism
  • artivism

Cite this

'