Decolonizing Mo(ve)ments?: Decoloniality in/as Praxis with LGBTIQ+ Activists in Uganda

Abstract

Anchored in collaboration with two LGBTIQ+ organizations in Uganda, this thesis explores the possibilities of recentring the epistemic agency and authority of Africa/ns’ knowledges about LGBTIQ+ activisms. As such, this thesis seeks to confront and delink from the ‘epistemic crisis’ of Eurocentrism whereby the Eurocentric paradigm as an epistemological system produces ‘a persistent exclusion of marginalized subjects from contributing to our collective epistemic resources for interpreting our experiences and the world’ (Posholi, 2020, p. 296). Here, the epistemic crisis refers to the incongruency between the increasingly visible and vocal LGBTIQ+ activists across Africa, and their near invisibility within the growing body of social sciences scholarship positing to engage with LGBTIQ+ activism(s) and social movements globally. By contrast, this thesis seeks to elevate LGBTIQ+ activists and allies’ counternarratives to the pervasive monolithic story ‘that activism does not exist and that there is only homophobia’ within Africa/ns (Ndashe, 2013, p. 156). Drawing on the concepts of coloniality of power, gender, and being, this thesis first provides an analysis of the constitutive elements of the Eurocentric paradigm that fuel the persistent exclusion of Africa/ns’ LGBTIQ+ activisms in and by social sciences research/ers. This thesis secondly attempts to recentre the epistemic agency, and authority of LGBTIQ+ activists and allies in Uganda through the methods of accompaniment, photovoice, photo-elicitation interviews and conversational interviews. Through these horizontal research practices, LGBTIQ+ activists and allies depicted and articulated LGBTIQ+ activisms in Uganda as a praxis of knowing, being, and doing anchored in solidarity, voice, acceptance, community, love, unity, hope, resilience, resistance, yet challenged by experiences of violence, isolation, burn-out, substance abuse, (in)visibility, and the monetisation of activism.