POSTMODERNISM, SEXUALITY AND IDENTITY RE-INVENTION IN AFRICAN QUEER NARRATIVE: JUDE DIBIA’S WALKING WITH SHADOWS
Abstract
This paper interrogates the conscious silence on homosexuality by writers and critics of African literature in their works. The paper adopts queer theory and some aspects of Judith Butler’s gender performativity as its theoretical positions, and also relies on close reading of Jude Dibia’s Walking with Shadows for analysis of some extrapolations. Findings in this paper reveal that, within the African context, the idea of sexuality has always been heterosexual and any other differing sexuality is seen as queer and non-normative. This, to some extent, accounts for why some African writers and critics, over the years, consciously omit sexuality from the content of African literature, as if it were not an aspect of African life. Wherever sexuality is mentioned, it is always given a favourable portraiture. Against this backdrop, this paper concludes that it is high time African writers and critics broke away from the erstwhile culture of silence and began to explore sexual identities like other socio-political issues in African societies.
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