Imperialism within the Margins Queer Representation and the Politics of Culture in Southern Africa

Through focusing on the sexual politics that have emerged out of post-apartheid South Africa, Spurlin investigates textual and cultural representations of same-sex desire outside of the Euroamerican axes of queer culture and politics, and considers the ways in which queer cultural productions in southern Africa do not merely intersect with western queer identity politics and cultural representations but also resist them. Imperialism Within the Margins therefore provides an engaged and much-needed critique of the long-present heterosexist biases of postcolonial studies and the western biases of academic queer theory.

William J. Spurlin is Senior Lecturer, English and Critical/Cultural Theory, School of English, Communication & Philosophy, Cardiff University.

Broadening Postcolonial Studies, Decolonising Queer Studies: Disciplinary Transitions and Social Change in the “New” South Africa * Reclaiming Insurgent Sexualities: Migrant Labor and Same-Sex Marriages on the South African Gold Mines * Affective Bonds Between Women in Lesotho: Retheorizing Gender, Sexuality, and Lesbian Existence * Nationalism, Homophobia, and the Politics of “New” South African Nationhood * Sexual/Cultural Hybridity in the “New” South Africa: Emergent Sites of New Transnational Queer Politics * Transforming Theory/Transforming Borders: Postcolonial Queer Enquiry and/as a Politics of Decolonisation