HUMA African Epistemologies Advanced Seminar Series

Speaker: Dr Bernard Fortuin

Introduction: Constructions of race, sexuality, and gender during South Africa’s colonial period resulted in a transcription of emerging Western views concerning homosexuality that held it as an abominable act and later sexual depravity. In this article, I look at the constructions of race and masculinity during South Africa’s extended period of colonisation. I investigate the significant effects of these constructions on a homosexual man’s identification, self-identification, and subjectivity, as represented in the film Proteus (2003). Like many other African countries that suffered under colonialism and racial oppression, South Africa borrows many of its constructions concerning sexuality from the colonial Centre. Before South Africa’s emancipation from racial oppression in 1994, many of the laws that governed the sexual interactions of its citizens had been introduced into the statutes during Dutch and British rule, suggesting a link between homophobia in South Africa under the institution of colonialism and the construction of homosexuality in the colonial Centre.

About the speaker: Dr Bernard Fortuin’s work focusses on representations of race, gender and sexuality. His MA thesis engaged apartheid (South Africa) through the theories of Fanon. Dr Fortuin’s PhD focused on the institutionalisation of racism and homophobia in South Africa during colonialism and apartheid. His work is concerned with institutions as socialising agents. His research also looks at labelling/naming and how useful the application of predominantly Western terms is for identifying, self-identifying and subjectivity of those who fall outside of what is generally accepted to be “normal” and who find themselves in dynamic and diverse contexts of the global South.

Convenor: Dr. Sanya Osha

More about HUMA African Epistemologies Advanced Seminar Series

Register to attend: send us an email at huma@uct.ac.za

Attending online? Register to join via Zoom: 

 See Google Maps for directions