Trends in Gender and Sexuality Research in Africa

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  • アフリカにおけるジェンダー／セクシュアリティ研究の潮流
  • アフリカ ニ オケル ジェンダー/セクシュアリティ ケンキュウ ノ チョウリュウ

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Abstract

This review summarizes trends in gender and sexuality studies. Although the research on African women began in the 1930s, it was only in the 1980s and the 1990s that African scholars started raising their voices. African feminist scholars, at first, critically analyzed the notion of gender originated in the West; however, they gradually shifted their focus on their originality rather than building their identity by criticizing Western feminism. This tendency coincided with the concern about HIV/AIDS and International movements and in the 2000s, African feminists started to shift the focus from gender to sexuality. The sexuality studies expanded beyond feminism research and have illustrated a variety of pictures including the ones that highlighted the positive aspects of African sexuality such as pleasure, eroticism, and desire. Nonetheless, this paper suggests that sexuality studies also have limits, as pointed out in the time of early African feminism research, in terms of romanticizing women's position or gender complementarity in Africa. To overcome the limits, this paper discusses the possibility of recent studies on love and affect. Although the case study centering on love and affect in Africa is limited, the studies show the complex and multidimensional aspects of intimate relations and depict different emotions and body experiences that each relation holds.

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