Tacit Erotic Intimacies and the Culture of Indirection

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Book chapter

Title:	Tacit Erotic Intimacies and the Culture of Indirection
Author:	Dankwa, Serena Owusua
Book title:	Knowing Women: Same-Sex Intimacy, Gender, and Identity in Postcolonial Ghana
Year:	2021
Pages:	47-78
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Ghana
Subjects:	homosexuality gender identity women LGBT
External link:	https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108863575.003
Abstract:	Examining media and historical texts as well as interviews with activists and business-owners, this chapter describes the uproar that ensued when Ghanaian politicians, clerics, and journalists conspired to circulate claims about a supposed 'homoconference' that was alledgedly planned by a local LGBTI activist. It lays out the cultural, political, and historical landscape in which (homo)sexuality has been called into discourse. It then considers the failed activist attempts to form a self-identified lesbian group and shows how same-sex desiring women resist, re-signify, or perform the global language of sexual rights activism and human rights. These women's reluctance to label and 'out' themselves in sexual terms, a practice deemed essential to empowering LGBTI subjects across the globe, calls for a close consideration of the indirect language of allusion, spoken within the informal networks of female friends and lovers, who may or may not identify as lesbian.