ABSTRACT

Queer expressions in Kenya are caught up in various discourses of law, religion, desire, nationhood, fantasy, language, aspirations and cultural codes. As a result of these interplays that rub against each other, contradictions about queer expressions become evident. To contextualise queer expressions in Kenya, and to usefully tease out these contradictions, an understanding of Kenya’s lived realities that cohere around these discourses can be explored using an enabling narrative framework. This framework relates to how the various discourses are produced, circulated and understood about queer lives. To this end I read Stories of Our Lives (2015), a queer archival project, to show how queer bodies narrate their lives in Kenya in ways that potentially create meanings and create subjectivity against a contradictory background. This practice of queer narration is understood not as an attempt at presenting a coherent body of selves but, rather, as a conscious rendition of particular cognitions of queer analysis which ultimately becomes a site of and for new meanings for queer selves.

摘要

肯尼亚的酷儿表达被各种法律，宗教，欲望，民族，幻想，语言，志向和文化法规所束缚。由于这些相互影响的相互作用，有关酷儿表情的矛盾变得很明显。为了使肯尼亚的酷儿表达语境化，并有效地挑逗这些矛盾，可以使用一个有利的叙述框架来探索对肯尼亚围绕这些话语的现实生活的理解。该框架涉及如何产生，传播和理解有关酷儿生活的各种话语。为此，我读了《我们的生活故事》（2015），一个酷儿档案项目，展示了酷儿团体如何以一种可能在相互矛盾的背景下创造意义和创造主观性的方式叙述他们在肯尼亚的生活。酷儿叙事的这种实践不应理解为试图表达连贯的自我，而是有意识地对酷儿分析的特定认知进行演绎，这些认知最终成为酷儿自我的一个场所并具有新的含义。