The City as a Metaphor of Safe Queer Experimentation in Monica Arac de Nyeko's ‘Jambula Tree’ & Beatrice Lamwaka's ‘Pillar of Love’

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In the last 15 years, there has emerged in the Ugandan public sphere what can be called a tradition of queer writing, delineating three trajectories. First, there is a furiously homophobic tabloid press, represented by the Red Pepper tabloid, whose writing about same-sex activity frames this sexuality as an existential threat to the Ugandan society. Second, there is the Ugandan academia, represented by Sylvia Tamale and Stella Nyanzi, who write proffering universalist human rights statutes in support of Ugandans who engage in samesex sexuality. Third, there are fictional writers such as Monica Arac de Nyeko, Beatrice Lamwaka, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi and Nakisanze Segawa who use fiction to debate this phenomenon. It is important to note that the thread that links the tabloid press, scholarly research and fictional writing in Ugandan homosexuality writing is the fact that often the Ugandan homosexual is a resident of the city. In fact, it can be argued that since the writers are themselves city residents, it is perhaps inevitable that they should locate their subjects in the metropolis.

If the intersection between Ugandan journalistic, academic and fictional writing lies in the fact that these nodes of knowledge production construct the metropolis as a space for possible performance of queerness, then it is useful to interrogate the forms of knowledge production about queerness that are made possible by an urban setting. This question reminds us of Wale Adebanwi's observation that African writers are social thinkers postulating an insightful overview of the African essence. He argues that African writers are ‘not merely intellectuals whose works mirror or can be used to mirror social thought, but [are] social thinkers themselves who engage with the nature of existence and questions of knowledge’ (‘The Writer as Social Thinker’: 406). Adebanwi's point in the above passage is that African writers use fiction to distil the essence, agency and worldview of African subjects. Given that homosexuality is contemporary Africa's most polarising subject, it is plausible to argue that writers like Makumbi, Arac de Nyeko, Lamwaka and Nakisanze are using fiction to enact platforms and congregate publics to debate this phenomenon.