Jimia Boutouba guest editor of a Special Issue
Genre, Sexualité et Politique dans le monde francophone (Gender, Sexuality and Politics in the Francophone World). Nouvelles Etudes Francophones (NEF), University of Nebraska Press. Volume 35:1, November 2020.
This special issue investigates how representations of gender and sexuality, and their politicization in different Francophone regions broaden current studies of gender and sexuality politics to include de-centered perspectives, and discourses informed by varied lived experiences and local understanding of power and resistance.
In her theoretical introduction to the special issue, titled “Genre et Sexualité dans le Monde Francophone: Entre pratiques esthétiques et combat politique,” Jimia provides an overview of recent developments in the field of gender and sexuality theories, highlighting their potential, but also limitations and blind spots when applied to differing cultural contexts. The article points to an urgent need to decolonize approaches to gender and sexuality which, oftentimes, fail to adequately engage the politics of difference as embedded in specific local contexts. It proposes a decolonial framework for a situated reflection, and advocates for a historical, intersectional, and contextually diverse approach that enables gender and sexuality studies to be a site of localized contestation.