Decolonizing the erotic: discussing gender and sexuality in the south
African film The Wound
Marcos Verdugo1
Abstract
The exploration of gender and decoloniality in relation to religion remains a little
underrepresented and undertheorized, with the literature focused on gender and
decoloniality generally. Moreover, theories of decoloniality offer scathing critiques
of Modernity and its liberal projects but lack an integral gender perspective. With
this in mind, this article seeks to make a theoretical contribution by challenging
conceptual delinking of gender and feminism in religious performances, the
conflation of gender and sex and the centrality of Eurocentric to the whole
context. I explore decolonial feminist strategies to disrupt the conventional gender
and religion studies. And since my focus will be religion in a “traditional” African
context, the conceptualization of decoloniality of gender through the lens of
feminist frontiers will commence with and draw on the mutually constitute nature
of racialized (the anthropological concept of “African traditions”) and gendered
relation in the post-colonial African world. In order to achieve this, we will discuss
the south African film The Wound (2017). The analysis illustrates how the erotic
includes the use/mis-use of body is a way to explore the concept of initiation as
a way to redefine gender categories within a pluriversal understanding of human
relations. Audre Lorde’s 1978 essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”
explores the very intersectionality of gender, race, class, and sexuality. That is,
she argues against the traditional uses of the erotic, which is based on abuses of
feelings: the repressed voice or more specifically, the voice that relies on policing,
censoring. Therefore, countering the traditional take on the erotic, we will develop
a more transgressive form of eros, trying to understand how subject position in a
“traditional African religion” influences if not determines their moral, social,
political, and sexual views.
1
PhD candidate in Religious Studies at the Pontifical University of São Paulo.