| This dissertation argues for the presence in colonial and postcolonial Francophone literatures of a current of male homoerotic desire between white Frenchmen and black Africans, which doubles colonial and postcolonial violence and which, despite a paucity of critical literature, merits discussion. The project interrogates works by Pierre Mille and Andre Demaison, Herman Gregoire, Ousmane Sembene, Saidou Bokoum, Williams Sassine, and Sony Labou Tansi. Studies of sexuality in the French colonial novel usually focus on the heterosexual gaze of the European colonizer upon the bodies of colonized women. When the subject of male homoeroticism in French colonial texts is broached, the desired Other is usually the North African or Southeast Asian boy Male homoerotic desire is also generally a taboo subject in Francophone postcolonial literature from black Africa, though African authors have accused Frenchmen of a homosexual fascination with black-African male bodies. In the treatment of textual instances of violence and homoerotic desire between white Frenchmen and black Africans the project yields new perspectives on the arbitrariness of race, gender and sexuality, and reveals the political implications of the deconstruction of these categories. While some of the narratives in this project do present explicit homoerotic acts, others show homoeroticism through the violence of fantasy and voyeurism. In some cases, male homoeroticism manifests itself as mimetic desire between a white Frenchman and an African male with a woman acting as a unit of exchange between the two. In this dissertation I unmask and challenge the unspoken, underlying assumptions about black male sexuality, white male hegemony and about gender and race in the colonial, post-colonial and postimperial state. This multidisciplinary project contributes to the discourse on desire in Francophone studies, proposing unique readings of homoeroticism in colonial and postcolonial texts. |
