Adriaan Van Klinken.  Kenyan, Christian, Queer: Religion, LGBT
Activism, and Arts of Resistance in Africa.  Africana Religions
Series. University Park  Penn State University Press, 2019.  xiv +
232 pp.  $89.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-271-08380-3.

Reviewed by Graeme Reid (Human Rights Watch and Yale University)
Published on H-Africa (September, 2020)
Commissioned by David D. Hurlbut

It Is Complicated: Being Christian and Queer in Kenya

Adriaan van Klinken has written an innovative and ambitious book that
sets out to do a lot: taunt the secular orthodoxy of queer
scholarship with a hint of Pentecostal fervor, complicate religious
studies with a dose of queer theology, and mobilize African
perspectives to provincialize queer theory. The book is as
theoretically versatile as it is methodologically varied. No wonder
"scavenger methodology" is van Klinken's self-descriptor of choice,
drawn from Jack Halberstam. The author describes his approach as "a
somewhat eclectic array" of data and method (p. 19). This is both its
strength and its weakness.

What holds these disparate elements of theory and method together? My
conclusion is that it is essentially the author himself, his
fieldwork experience, his perspectives, beliefs and interest in
various forms of cultural production. Of course, that could be said
about almost any book, but the author of _Kenyan, Christian, Queer_
places particular emphasis on the power of storytelling and inserts
his own experiences as a kind of cartilage between chapters. The
scaffolding of the book consists of four chapters--case
studies--separated by these self-reflective interludes. But despite
the discrete containment of the author's research experiences in the
interludes, his theological perspective permeates the whole book. It
is a kind of magpie combination of elements that is both provocative
and distracting.

In the first chapter van Klinken sets the tone by introducing themes
that recur throughout the book, including his theological framing, a
focus on public representations of subjective lgbt experience (van
Klinken uses lowercase for the acronym throughout to signal the
provisional nature of identity categories), and his treatment of
literary and social text as archive. The chapter begins with a coming
out narrative by Binyavanga Wainaina, written in the form of a lost
chapter of a previously published memoir. Van Klinken then explores
Wainaina's oeuvres, especially his critique of homophobia and one of
its driving forces--Christian dogma. He reframes Wainaina's critique
as visionary and anoints him "prophet," notwithstanding Wainaina's
own skepticism about the title. Is "prophet," then, an appropriate
characterization? While it fits uncomfortably with Wainaina's
disavowal, it resonates with van Klinken's overarching thesis that
sites of possibility are to be found in unexpected, subaltern spaces,
and that these may usefully--if optimistically--be thought of as
prophetic. "I am a homosexual, mum," is the simple truth revealed in
Wainaina's creative nonfiction. It caused a stir, amplified by a
subsequent tweet in which he confirmed: "I am, for anybody confused
or in doubt, a homsexual [sic]. Gay, and quite happy."

Van Klinken sees Wainaina's coming out as a political intervention
that creates new, open-ended possibilities, a leitmotif in his book.
The "lost chapter" concept employed by Wainaina echoes van Klinken's
interest in the value of personal narrative as well as silence,
absence, and the archive. By restoring the missing segment of his
autobiography Wainaina defies the imperative for discrete silence,
conjures the figure of the homosexual in the space of its absence,
and contributes to an ever-expanding archive of queer experience.
Indeed, the concept of archive is reinforced by the work spawned in
the wake of Wainaina's disclosure. In a similar vein, in
_R__eclaiming Afrikan: Queer Perspectives on Sexual and Gender
Identities_ (2014), Zethu Matebeni expanded "queer African archives"
by riffing off Wainaina's satirical essay, "How to Write about
Africa" to reflect ironically on outsider perspectives in her piece
"How NOT to Write about Queer South Africa" (pp. 17, 35). Archive
runs like a red thread through the book but is under-theorized and
stands as almost self-evident. Further interrogation of the concept
of "archive" would enable the reader to understand better the
production, reception, and preservation of certain forms of
knowledge, rather than assume the artifacts of "arts of resistance"
as given. 

Wainaina's coming out story was published in January 2014, in which
there was an intensification of the political use of homophobia,
culminating in pernicious legislation in Uganda and Nigeria. Wainaina
had strong connections to both countries through family and
affectional bonds. Wainaina's story echoes the feminist adage the
"personal is political," to which van Klinken adds his interest in
the "body as a site of struggle," referencing Wainaina's disclosure
of his HIV status, some three years after coming out as gay (echoing
the author's self-disclosure in the interlude "Positive"). Wainaina's
narratives are prime examples, says van Klinken, of what Achille
Mbembe calls "African modes of self-writing" through which he
is--perhaps unwittingly--catapulted into the role of spokesperson (a
role for which he is subsequently criticized by some activists for
not being representative, inclusive, or consistent enough) (p. 35). 

The second chapter interprets a music video by Art Attack, a
Nairobi-based group, featuring the song "Same Love (Remix)" (2016),
which was restricted by the Kenyan Film Classification Board (KFCB),
in part because it went "against the moral values of the country" (p.
61). The lyrics, imagery, reception, and statements made by the
musicians combine to build an argument echoed in the opening lines of
the song to the backdrop of a South African flag: "This song goes out
to the new slaves, the new blacks, the new Jews, the new minorities
for whom we need a civil rights movement, maybe a sex rights
movement. Especially in Africa. Everywhere. This goes out to you. I
feel you" (p. 68). The language of civil rights and minorities
replicates a US-centric playbook as does the original song. The
complication of this intertwining and cultural borrowing deserves
further exploration. The in-depth theological reading of the video
seems like a stretch, given that the religious references are quite
sparse, unless one approaches theology as an analytic tool. 

Van Klinken anticipates and pushes back against the expectation that
queer is synonymous with transgressing norms. Through a contextual
reading of the video, and in particular the social and political
significance of the Nairobi Arboretum, he argues that vanilla, in
context, has the potential to be the new queer vanguard. The setting
of the video--in the shadow of the presidential residence and a site
of religious observance--symbolically reclaims space and is filmed
without official permission, one of the technical reasons cited by
the KFCB for restricting the distribution of the video.

The author nods approvingly at the depiction in the video of
egalitarian same-sex relations as a rejection of heteronormativity,
effectively rendering relations based on a dyad of power
differentials top/bottom, butch/femme (which he suggests are
economically determined) as a form of false consciousness. But
downplaying difference could equally be read as an aspiration toward
modernity and a rejection of relationship patterns that may well be
subjectively experienced by the participants in unexpected ways. This
remains unexamined in the text and speaks to a broader limitation in
his analysis; the images and lyrics are taken as given and not
treated as cultural artifacts worthy of analysis in and of
themselves. More attention to the elements of the video as bricolage
would give further insight into the global circulation of some ideas
over others and the Kenyan appropriation of specifically US styles
and identity-based consciousness. 

The throwaway line about "gay vague"--the mainstream incorporation of
gay sartorial register into everyday style--could be further
developed as a way of highlighting ideas about urbanity, masculinity,
modernity, and the complicated relationship with class and
cosmopolitan style, which makes certain forms of queer expression
palatable, even fashionable, to a certain social milieu (p. 71).
While Audrey Mbugua, founder of Transgender Education and Advocacy
(TEA), has earned a name for herself as provocateur and a thorn in
the side of the lgbt movement, her support of the KFCB and rejection
of trans-inclusivity is an interesting counter-narrative, if
strategically misguided, that resists the global hegemony of lgbt,
exposing these as unstable and contested categories. As a voice in
the wilderness, might she be considered a prophet, of sorts?

The third chapter is about a collection of 250 life stories, curated
by The Nest, an arts collective based in Nairobi, with the intention
of providing a counter-narrative to populist rhetoric that
homosexuality is "un-African." Some of the stories were published in
an anthology, _Stories of Our Lives _(2015) edited by the NEST
Collective, and five of these were dramatized in a film by the same
name, banned by the KFCB. The author engages the stories as
unmediated texts, authentic personal narratives, that can be treated
as an archive of alternative knowledge, located in time and space.
The stories are set in Nairobi, Mombasa, and small towns in Kenya,
but van Klinken makes the point that they also speak to Kenya in
Africa and are located within a global queer imaginary. The author
treats the recurring themes as evidence, taken at face value. I was
left wanting to know more about the archival project, in order to
better understand the production of particular narratives. This again
speaks to the limitations of a theological reading of text, in which
the author appears to take the material almost for granted, rather
than focusing more explicitly on how stories both reflect and produce
subjectivities. It seems interesting to me to focus on how certain
themes and narratives are reproduced, how those echo a political
reality for a specific class of people in Kenya, and how that
resonates with global discourses around lgbt rights. The stories
themselves are bricolage, imagined interiorities that draw on
multiple competing discourses. The stories tell interesting
meta-narratives about the construction of identities, drawing on a
wide range of resources, fast tracked by instant global
communication.

The fourth, and last, chapter is the most methodologically grounded,
not only for my anthropological bias. It is about a queer affirming
church, and his research includes some participant observation,
supplemented by ongoing exchanges in a WhatsApp group. The links to
the US are very direct, notwithstanding the obvious reluctance of The
Fellowship Global to be seen as the initiator and sustainer for what
clearly is a Kenyan project. It is Joseph Tolton of the US-based
Fellowship of Affirming Ministries who confers authority on the
leaders of the Kenyan church community. It seems to me that the very
reason for the need to assert the localness of the church, in the
face of its strong US connections, is interesting in and of itself
and would have been a point of tension to interrogate, rather than
explain. In this sense, it does seem that van Klinken takes on the
mantle of "research as advocacy," the subject of his closing
interlude in which he grapples with the discomfort and veracity of
that role (p. 187). 

Van Klinken's willingness to innovate through his embrace of
"scavenger methodology" and his close attention to sites of
possibility, to prophetic vision, have produced a creative hybrid, a
bricolage, that will stimulate further engagement between disparate
fields, especially between queer studies and religious studies (p.
19). The book also provides new perspectives in the burgeoning field
of queer African studies. Van Klinken is alert to the discordant
notes, personal stories at odds with social norms, acts of defiance
small and large, which he sees as signs of potential for change. In
this way, slivers of subjective experience or events like small,
barely noticed church services emerge as good omens. And that is the
hopeful, optimistic message of his book--van Klinken's version of
"cruising utopia" (p. 138). His use of theology as an interpretive
tool reads, at times, like an uncomfortable overlay. But,
simultaneously, it is radically disruptive of religious orthodoxies.
His turn to feminist (and a smaller body of queer) theology, which
reinterprets "fruitfulness," outside the narrow confines of
reproduction, and the body as a site of connection and pleasure,
stands out (p. 135). The provocation to queer studies to be less
secure in a secular space and pay more attention to religion and
faith is powerful and overdue. His frank appraisal of his fieldwork
experiences and the ways these shape his work make for refreshing
interludes. His approach to religion and queer studies is fruitful
academically and--no matter how reluctant he is to accept the
"researcher as advocate" mantle--also useful in providing necessary
counter-narratives to the homosexuality is "un-Christian" and
"un-African" argument, which has been central to the rhetoric of
political homophobia on the continent since the mid-1990s. By
blurring boundaries, this book makes a valuable contribution to many
fields.

Citation: Graeme Reid. Review of Van Klinken, Adriaan, _Kenyan,
Christian, Queer: Religion, LGBT Activism, and Arts of Resistance in
Africa_. H-Africa, H-Net Reviews. September, 2020.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55344

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