Verqueerte Laufwege – Sport & Körper in Geschichtswissenschaften und Cultural Studies

Starting with the observation that contemporary media coverage of sports events and athletes is clearly influenced by critical scholarship on the body in the humanities, this editorial outlines the different ways sporting bodies over the last decades have moved into the focus of scholarly attention in Sports History and in Cultural Studies. The authors argue that although trendsetting developments in Cultural Studies were adopted by historians only reluctantly and belatedly, the history of ‘bodies in motion’ has now flourished into a significant subfield of Sports History in general. In order to facilitate the ongoing dialogue between different academic traditions the editorial suggest three areas for further research from which Sports History might benefit in future: the integration of Queer Theories, an increased attention to cultural and technological borders of human bodies, and matters of doping. Finally the authors introduce the essays of this issue of Body Politics and underline their contributions to a history of ‘bodies in motion.

Yearbook I - PhD research in progress July 2007

An edited volume with contributions from five PhD researchers in the school of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of East London. Each contributor details their research work in progress. Topics in this volume include: sexuality narratives of women in Turkey, post-apartheid South African culture, Turkey and the European information society, conceptualising feminism in Africa, and discourses of Europeanised cosmopolitanism

The cultural politics of female same-sex intimacy in post-apartheid South Africa

In 1996 South Africa became the first country in the world that explicitly incorporated lesbian and gay rights within the Bill of Rights of the post-apartheid constitution. Since then the discussion and proclamation of sexual identities has increasingly emerged. This has brought not only the subject of rights but also the question of gender relations and cultural authenticity, as visible for example in the emerging populist notion of homosexuality as un-African, into the focus of the nation state's politics. The thesis examines the politics behind the claim homosexuality is un-African and its historical anchorage in the history of colonialism and apartheid. The thesis explores how colonialism and apartheid have historically shaped constructions of gender and sexuality and how these concepts are not only re-introduced by discourses of homosexuality as un-African but also through the post-apartheid constitution itself. As the interpretation of rights in relation to sexuality generally focuses on gay identities this thesis reflects on the effects of these discourses on non-normative modes of sexuality and intimacy. More specifically the thesis focuses on the interviews that I have conducted in Johannesburg on 'mummy-baby' relationships. By contextualizing these relationships in the historical and cultural framework of sexual cultures and cultures of intimacy this thesis argues that the South African history and cultures provided/provide a space which accommodates forms of female same-sex intimacy that are not necessarily linked to metropolitan sexual cultures. The thesis discusses the tensions between nonlesbian same-sex intimacy and metropolitan lesbianism and it explores the extent that these forms of intimacy are further marginalized by a post-apartheid constitution which reinforces a homosexual/heterosexual binarized identity. Therefore, the thesis questions the regulatory functions of identity and (Western) notions of sexual subjectivities and problematizes the practice of 'coming out' as always being a liberating moment. To do this the thesis pays attention to cultural and historical categories of sexualities, to normative and/or subversive forms of masculinities and femininities, and to social inclusion and exclusion on the basis of gender, sexuality and race. By doing so the thesis explores the suitability of queer theory in the South African context

Through the Postcolonial Eyes: Images of Gender and Female Sexuality in Contemporary South Africa

This article explores cultural representations of the lesbian in post-apartheid South Africa by focusing on images by the Black lesbian activist and photographer Zanele Muholi. In her work Muholi challenges visual regimes of sexuality and the body by pointing to practices and commodities that transgress normative perceptions of (hetero)sexuality. At the same time her images visualize the negotiations of local representations of female same-sex intimacies and sexual identities with global lesbian cultures and identities. By doing so they are targeting the assumption—and its effects—that homosexuality cannot act as a signifier for a decolonized subject

“What's Identity Got To Do With It?” Rethinking Intimacy and Homosociality in Contemporary South Africa

The article focuses on female same-sex intimacy, specifically so-called “mummy–baby” relationships among schoolgirls in contemporary South Africa. The underlying negotiations with colonial but also post-colonial discourses of sexuality, identity, and gender, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer (LGBTIQ) rights, and the problem of naming, are examined here. While post-apartheid South Africa was the first country in the world to explicitly incorporate lesbian and gay rights within the Bill of Rights of the Constitution, the surrounding countries chose to exclude lesbians and gay men from citizenship rights by proclaiming, in a populist way, the idea of homosexuality as un-African, a discourse also forming within South Africa itself. The term “homosexuality”, as defined through more than three decades of feminism and gay liberation, however, does not describe the complexities of same-sex practices throughout history. “Mummy–baby” relationships as a culturally specific form of female same-sex intimacy, especially in relation to homosociality as a form of gender intimacy and the sexuality apparatus, are analysed here. The article looks at girls' relationships as spaces in which homosociality, same-sex intimacy, and erotic practices can join together; however, the latter is increasingly joined by homophobia. I argue that the “closet” violently jars with some same-sex relationships, such as “mummy–baby” relationships, because they have never been closeted as such