Demobilising the Phallic Order: Narrating Female Heterosexual Agencies in Queer Narratives
Demobilising the Phallic Order: Narrating Female Heterosexual Agencies in Queer Narratives

Summary/Abstract: Studies on gender and sexual violence, most especially Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), have mostly regarded women and wives as victims and men, with husbands as perpetrators of violence (Chinweizu 1990; Coker-Appiah and Cusack 1999; and Fonchingong 2006). This study attempts a revisit of such discourses especially their representations in fictional narratives. In achieving this, I examine the perspectivisation of women and wives as upholders and perpetrators of sexual oppression towards male homosexuals and bisexuals in African fictional narratives. Two purposively selected texts – Alaa Al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building and Jude Dibia’s Walking with Shadows –, representing Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa, are used in the examination and discussion of the roles of women in male-victimhood within male homosexual narratives. In the analysis, I apply Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of Agency as theoretical framework. Central to the discussions is the identification that women characters play critical roles as moral police and upholders of heteronormativity in the lives of the male homosexual and bisexual characters. The study concludes that the oppressive agencies of the women characters in the studied narratives repress the sexual agency of the queer characters; and that these are destructive to same-sex relations and culminate in emotional and psychological trauma.

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