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WORLD ANTHROPOLOGICAL UNION

CONGRESS 2024​

Paper

How do artist-activist agencies and queer community resonate in Ghana? : the case study of creative practices to visualize and empower the inequalities and marginalities of queer community

presenters

    Shoko Mori

    Nationality: Japanese

    Residence: Ghana

    Tokyo Metropolitan University

    Presence:Face to Face/ On Site

Keywords:

artist-activists, anti-lgbtq law, creative practice, queer community,

Abstract:

This presentation analyses how artist-activists in Ghana engage in creative practices that have transformed inequalities and marginalities for the queer communities in Ghana since the parliament approved an anti-LGBTQ law in 2021. The transformative practices of language and the body, as represented in music videos and social media, and everyday struggles and solidarity through social networking dialogue beyond places and spaces will be taken up as examples. The socio-cultural context includes anti-homosexuality laws dating back to colonial law and pervasive religious gender norms that promote misogyny and justify social exclusion, including violence against LGBTQ people in Ghana. At the root of this presentation is the question of how people endure precarious lives and how they confront the challenge of a life that can be lived in a post-COVID world (Butler, 2004 & 2022). In Ghana, artist-activists are well known for scathing satirical expressions exposing the deceptions of neoliberalism and religious financial conglomerates (Daswani 2024). And since the Parliament approved an anti-LGBTQ law in 2021 (Coleman 2023), the solidarity and collaborations with artist-activists and the queer community are growing more active. By analyzing the intersections of art agencies in their recent movements, this presentation examines creative practices that transform inequalities and marginalities. Butler, J. (2004) Undoing Gender. Roudledge. --- (2022) What World Is This?: A Pandemic Phenology. Columbia University Press. Coleman, T. E., & Ako, E. Y., & Kyeremateng, J. G. (2023) A human rights critique of Ghana's Anti-LGBTIQ+ Bill of 2021, African Human Rights Law Journal. vol. 23; 96-125. Kauppinen, A. R., & Daswani, G. (2024) Banker, pastor, teef: Christian financial elites and vernaculars of accountability in Ghana, American Anthropologist. 2024; 1-14.