Conceptualising African Masculinity Studies

Critical researchers of masculinities take it as axiomatic that what they are involved in are efforts to understand the workings of power among men and between men and women. Informed by a reading of historical and contemporary African and black struggles, in this chapter I want to show that a fuller understanding of African masculinities entails thinking about more than fights for power, where that contestation is thought to be between already established dominant and subordinate classes of men in a society. To fully grasp African masculinities, not only at the height of colonialism and apartheid but up-to-day, an accounting of the struggles of men and women against dehumanisation is warranted. In other words, these struggles are struggles for life itself. As such, given that at one point some men and women were outside of society, considered property or not quite human, we must endeavour to comprehend the question of being unhumaned, of the subhuman, of being nonmen (and nonwomen), in order to understand African masculinities more fully. A specific way to effect this undertaking which I will engage with is to look for and encourage each other to look for African and black writing and artist work beyond the field of masculinities.