[Commlist] CfC: Social mediated gender performances and representations: Popular culture, politics and everyday citizenship in Africa

*Cfc: Social mediated gender performances and representations: Popular 
culture, politics and everyday citizenship in Africa*

**

This call for chapters is meant to solicit contributions from academics, 
activists, creative practitioners and independent researchers with a 
focus on social media and gender performances and representations in 
popular culture, politics and everyday citizenship in Africa. Gender, as 
a social elaboration of the biological category of sex and something we 
do and perform (West and Zimmerman 1987; Butler 1990) has always been a 
contentious subject in different communities globally. There has not 
been a neat distinction and a clear line of separation as to when 
nurture and nature disentangle and entangle. Thus, the nature/nurture 
debates, especially where conversations occur among ordinary people, 
remain important sites for contesting and understanding identities in 
society. These are expressed in social or political gatherings, 
churches, beer halls, mainstream media and social media. Social media 
have affected the way identities are constructed and imagined, 
represented and consumed globally. Their unbounded nature has made it 
possible for these discourses to transcend geographic and cultural 
boundaries. Thus, ethnic, gender, ideological, and political identities 
are constructed, discussed, challenged, cemented or changed in social 
media, as these sites are extensions and mirror human everyday lives. 
Social media have been spaces where people clandestinely or openly 
perform or address their identities and even plan offline events and 
engagements. These spaces have also changed and reinforced some of the 
ideologies associated with gender that have been spread by traditional 
media.

With this background, gender constructions, performances, and debates, 
especially where issues around sexuality, gendered roles in society have 
been some of the most contentious on social media platforms such as 
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tik-Tok. These platforms have been used 
to reflect and magnify some sections of society’s imagination of gender 
and its performances, sexuality and different roles expected of members 
of society. In some cases, these platforms have been used to perform 
sexuality and gender for different purposes and with different outcomes. 
Closeted homosexuals who have struggled to openly tell their families of 
their sexuality have used social media platforms ‘to come out’. The 
reactions from online communities are usually varied. Debates on the 
role of women in political and corporate leadership have also been 
ventilated. While some members of society concede equal citizenship and 
capabilities to women as leaders, some argue otherwise. Both female and 
male bodies have been used to sell products and debates around whether 
the commodification and commercialization of these bodies empowers or 
disempowers not only the characters who perform but their different 
genders as well abound. Celebrity culture in Africa and indeed globally 
has shown an interaction between celebrities and their followers in ways 
that were unimaginable decades ago. Where celebrities have been seen as 
toxic, cancel culture has been invoked and some social media debates 
have suggested that only male offending celebrities are cancelled. This 
call for chapters, therefore, seeks to solicit chapters from the African 
context on the following topics and any other related issues:

-The performances of gender on social media

-Sexual objectification online

-Power and control of one’s body and sexuality in online performances

-Case studies of gender-based violence online

-Exposing vs normalizing gender roles in social media debates

-Commercialization/Commodification of gender in social media

-Challenging and defending patriarchy and the male savior

-Feminism debates

- Performing gender online

-The concept of voice in social media vs in society: Have women, and 
non-heterosexual people gained their voices on social media

The use of gender as an ideology to silence, include and exclude in 
social media.

-How are male, female and other bodies consumed online

-Gender and self-representation in social media.

-How corporates and governments engage with citizens on social media 
based on gendered identities

-Women as collateral damage in political conflicts: exposing women’s 
nudes to score political points

-The careless talk and treatment of women’s bodies and characters in 
social media debates

-The roles of social media in inequality debates in society

-Debates and engagement with gender during electoral periods

-Engagements with gender in celebrity cultures

-Online gendered performances during COVID-19 and what this tells us 
about positionalities of men and women in some contexts

-The role and consumption of African and African diaspora bodies on 
social media

-Gender, humor and social media

Please email chapter proposals of up to 500 words in length, as well as 
brief author biographical information, to the volume editors at Prof 
Shepherd Mpofu ((shepherd.mpofu /at/ ul.ac.za) 
<mailto:(shepherd.mpofu /at/ ul.ac.za)>) and Dr Kealeboga Aiseng 
((k.aiseng /at/ ru.ac.za) <mailto:(k.aiseng /at/ ru.ac.za)>).These should be sent 
through by the 15th of September 2022. Decisions on proposals will be 
made and communicated to authors early October 2022. Lexington Books 
will publish this volume.


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