AEGIS ECAS 2007 - View abstract

Panel	31. Sexuality and Politics in Africa
Paper ID	253
Author(s)	Dankwa, Serena Owusua
Paper	No paper submitted
Abstract	While in Europe and North America sexual practices and particularly same-sex desires are regarded as constitutive for the construction of identities, West African societies have privileged different social categories such as age or marital status. Thus in Ghana, historical forms of women's same-sex intimacies have been conceptualised beyond Euro-American models of lesbian lifestyles and identity politics. First, through an exploration of the subjective life histories of women ‘doing supi’, this paper zooms in on the agency and the processes of identification of women involved in same-sex bonding networks in urban Ghana. Focusing on women of three age groups, it aims at capturing the (shifting) understandings of friendship and intimacy in postcolonial Southern Ghana. Integral to my interest in women’s narratives is the ways in which they themselves compose meanings and interpret the mechanisms by which they do so. Second, by exploring how the slogan ‘sexual rights are human rights’ has been taken up by grassroots activists in Accra, this paper will examine the modes in which globally circulating concepts of sexuality and identity are being appropriated and transformed. Moreover, exploring cultural texts such as religious pamphlets, dating websites, films, and newspaper articles representing ‘supi-supi lesbianism’, it will point at the intersections of colonial and postcolonial local forms of homophobia. Considering the covertness of female same-sex intimacy a range of questions arises: What is the language in which such relationships are characterised by the Ghanaian women who forge them? How do these bonds impact other roles they play, as mothers, wives, and workers? How are ‘supi’ friendships negotiated within a pre-dominantly Christian hetero-normative context on the one hand and within Akan-dominated matrifocal and homosocial structures on the other? These are among the questions that have emerged from conversations with adult women in Accra – conversations that raise questions about the practices and complexities of doing this research without projecting assumptions about meaning or practice on such relationships, for example, the question of whether or not same-sex practices should be understood as, either intentionally or effectively, subversive. The proposed paper draws on research undertaken within the framework of my doctoral project. Located at the crossroads of African history, queer studies, and feminist anthropology, it seeks at creating conceptual spaces for the social and historical understandings of same-sex love and desires beyond categories of sexuality. Based on field research undertaken between January and July 2007, I will present empirical material generated in Accra and Koforidua.

Doing "Supi": Female Friendships and Intimacies in Postcolonial Ghana