At the intersections: understanding LGBT rights, HIV prevention, and queer political activism in Ghana

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This research examines the character of queer political activism in Accra, Ghana. Specifically, it considers how models of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) rights and identity emerging from the global North connect (and disconnect) with local queer political practices and forms of subjectivity. In so doing, it addresses two primary scholarly debates: on the 'globalisation' of gay identity and on the impact of HIV interventions and LGBT rights discourses in sub-Saharan Africa. Methodologically, the research is based on a thirteen month ethnography of an HIV/LGBT rights organisation and among networks of queer working class men - locally called sasoi (sing. saso) - in Accra. This also comprised twenty-nine in-depth interviews in a blend of English and Ghanaian languages and eight group interviews with saso activists.The study makes three central, interlinked arguments:1. that fixed or 'universalist' models of LGBT rights and identity have not usurped or erased local queer subjectivities and forms of politics in Accra. Rather, they have been indigenised by saso activists in pragmatic and context-specific ways, as part of a fluid lexicon of queer linguistic, subjective, and embodied practices that challenge dominant gender norms and power relations;2. that whilst there is not currently an LGBT rights 'movement' in Ghana, there exists a range of queer political formations, actors, and practices - both formal and informal - that can be understood as activism. Moreover, this contingent, context-bound arrangement - what I term the 'assemblage' of queer Ghanaian activism - has significant transformative power;3. that, at the same time, saso lives and politics are mediated by a set of systematic or 'hegemonic' constraints, notably class relations, homophobia, and heteronormativity, which are frequently reinforced by the political economy of development (and by HIV interventions predicated on voluntarism). This hegemony compromises saso political activism and produces a dislocation between the operations and agendas of global development actors and the needs and priorities of working class sasoi.Located within an emerging corpus of research that examines global queer cultures, HIV initiatives, and LGBT activism, the contribution of this research is threefold: empirical; theoretical; and analytical. In empirical terms, it contributes to the scant literature on queer sexualities and activism in Ghana by offering an in-depth ethnographic account of the lives and political practices of saso activists in Accra. With its concern for the emic and the voice 'from below', the study directly challenges 'universalising' accounts of gay identity and deterministic readings of HIV and LGBT rights discourses (Altman, 1996; Kole, 2007; Massad, 2002). It sets out instead how rights and identity models travel, diffuse, and transform in this setting. In so doing, the study breaks with existing trends in the development and public health literatures that focus primarily on the discursive or the epidemiological in relation to queer sexualities in the global South (Young and Meyer, 2005; Jolly, 2007; Cornwall & Jolly, 2009; Beyrer et al, 2012; Gosine, 2015) and privileges the agency of queer Ghanaian activists and modes of political action. Theoretically, the study expands the scope of the existing queer and poststructuralist-inflected literature on same-sex sexualities in the global South (Nguyen, 2008; Gaudio, 2009; Ekine & Abbas, 2013; Boyce, 2014; Sandfort et al, 2015) by drawing on Marxist political economy and by centering the intersection of class and sexuality. Thus, by synthesising a poststructuralist, psychodynamic concern for identity and difference with an approach rooted in political economy, the study offers sustained insight into queer lives and politics in Ghana and provides a powerful theoretical and analytical framework for scholars working on similar issues in both the global South and global North.