Digital Expressions of Gender in Africa by Amaefula, Rowland Chukwuemeka;

Short description:

Drawing on case studies from across North, East, West, Central and Southern Africa, this book investigates the ways in which social media-enabled cultural products resist heteronormativity and project varying masculinities, femininities, and personalities which negate birth sex.

Long description:

This book investigates the ways in which gender is performed in Africa’s digital spaces.

Social media and digital platforms provide young Africans with spaces to performatively resist gender conformance and assert bodies in transitions. These spaces allow gender identities to be fluidly made, unmade, and remade. Drawing on case studies from across North, East, West, Central and Southern Africa, this book investigates the ways in which social media-enabled cultural products resist heteronormativity and project varying masculinities, femininities, and personalities which negate birth sex. These identities, in turn, open up possibilities for transgender individuals, non-binary persons, and empowered women to performatively resist the systemic constructions of gender. Four particular themes are explored in depth: representations of women in cultural texts, call-out culture and resistance of cyberbullying, contested masculinities, and antinormative gender enactments.

The book’s inclusive exploration of gendered paradigms of digital expressions in Africa will be of interest to researchers across gender studies, sociology, performing arts, literary studies, linguistics, cultural studies and media studies.

“This transdisciplinary volume presents a thought-provoking discussion of gender in Africa that promises to newly inform, perhaps even transform, the reader’s understanding of both concepts. An informative introduction and nuanced analyses offer new insights, with no easy takes, on the complex role of gender in contemporary digital spaces.”

— Brian Valente-Quinn, Associate Professor, University of Colorado Boulder, US.

“Resonant discourses; embodied in crucial gender debates that are transformative. The double bind, yet the excitement that Digital Expressions of Gender in Africa generates extends and deepens our understanding of netizens, agency, sexualities, performativity and heteronormativity. Where social media encounters gender debates or vice versa is of profound significance today.”

— Pepetual Mforbe Chiangong, Assistant Professor, Hmt Rostock/Humboldt University Berlin, Germany.

“Amaefula’s edited collection is essential and pioneering. It spans the digital realm and African continent from various vantage points. It unpacks the ways in which user engagement in digital space, interrogates, negotiates and reinvents established gender norms, reinterprets traditions/folklore, and creates new gender identities in the African context and beyond.”

— Monique Charles, Assistant Professor, Chapman University, US.

Table of Contents:

Foreword (Ignatius Chukwumah). 1. Gender, Performance and Digital Spaces in Africa (Rowland Chukwuemeka Amaefula) PART I: Transgressing Normative Gender 2. Realizing and Normalizing ‘New’ Gender Identities through Social Media Platforms (Dimpho Takane Maponya) 3. Subverting Gender Binaries in Kenya’s Mama Fathma’s Kiswahili TikTok Comedy (Wendo Nabea) 4. North African Arabic Literary Expressions of  LGBTQIA+  Identity in the Digital Space (Sebastian Gadomski) 5. Digital Skit Makers and Gender Expression in Ghana: The Case of Deaconess Abokuma and Akonoba (Ellen Abakah, Abena Kyere and Cecilia Avorkliyah) PART II: Contested Masculinities on Online Sites 6. Exploring Transiting Masculinities in African Digital Literary Texts (Grace Danquah) 7. Perceptions of ‘The Unfaithful Lover’ and In/vulnerability in the Ztorie Bhuku Blog (Walter Kudzai Barure) 8. Re-imagining Masculinity and The Trickster Model in African Digital Acts (Nwani Treasure Okoronkwor) PART III: Call-Out Culture and Resistance 9. African Women and The Politics of Refusal in a Digital Era (Dina Ligaga) 10. The Role of Cyberbullying in Gender Identity Performance by Cameroonians Online (Camilla Arundie Tabe and Agwetang Mabel Endah) PART IV: Navigating Men’s Dominance: Women and Self-Expressions 11. Women YouTube Rappers in Tunisia: Neither Manly nor Sluts, but Rap Lovers (Jyhene Kebsi) 12. Re-assessing Feminine Portraits in Social Media Comedy Skits: The Anglophone Cameroon Context (Lynda Chinenye Ambrose)13. Female Imaging: Zambian Women Writers and The Digital Space (Shilika Chisoko)14. Gender Expressions, Digital Sites and An Inclusive Future (Rowland Chukwuemeka Amaefula)