Amphibious Subjects: Sasso and the Contested Politics of Queer Self-Making in Neoliberal Ghana

Amphibious Subjects is an ethnographic study of a community of self-identified effeminate men in coastal Jamestown, Ghana, challenging Western categories of gender and sexuality and unsettling claims of the Christian heteronationalist state and LGBT+ human rights organizations.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 293 pages
Publication date: 26 July 2022
Publisher: University of California Press

Amphibious Subjects is an ethnographic exploration of a community of self-identified effeminate men, referred to as sasso, residing in coastal Jamestown, a suburb of Accra, Ghana's capital. Drawing upon the concept of amphibious personhood articulated by Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Gyekye, Kwame Edwin Otu contends that sasso embody and express amphibious subjectivity in their self-making, crafting an identity that transcends the homogenizing impulses of Western categories of gender and sexuality. This subjectivity simultaneously challenges the assertions made by the Christian heteronationalist state and LGBT+ human rights organizations that Ghana is predominantly heterosexual or homophobic. Through a rich tapestry of personal interactions, participant observation, autoethnography, archival sources, essays from African and African-diasporic literature, and critical analyses of documentaries like the BBC's The Worlds Worst Place to Be Gay, Amphibious Subjects emerges as an ethnographic meditation on how Africa is configured as the epicenter of homophobic darkness in transnational LGBT+ human rights imaginaries.

Weight: 392g
Dimension: 228 x 153 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780520381858