Queer slacktivism as silent activism? The contested politics of queer subjectivities on GhanaWeb

Abstract

This article examines the news, information, and entertainment website called GhanaWeb to ascertain how Ghanaians anonymously engaged in debates and conversations on homosexuality in Ghana and the diaspora between 2006 and 2012. Ghana’s 1992 Republican constitution criminalizes homosexuality in Section 104 of the Criminal Code, setting the terrain for non-heterosexual bodies and practices to be regarded as illegitimate. This is the terrain that informs the reactions to opinion pieces on homosexuality on GhanaWeb. Hence, the article contends that conversations and debates on homosexuality on GhanaWeb among Ghanaians and non-Ghanaians who are for or against LGBTI human rights constitute “queer slacktivism.” Arguably, this “online activism” is activism. Turning to Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1981) notion of heteroglossia, which describes the coexistence of a variety of languages, and to a lesser extent, Stephanie Camp’s (2007) extension of Edward Said’s (1978) concept of “rival geography,” the article unpacks how GhanaWeb functions as a cyber geography in which the official language that Ghana is heterosexual at once competes with and is subverted by anti-homophobic rhetoric.