Event

The Centre for Gender and Development Studies will host a Lunctime Seminar on Wednesday 16th April, 2008 from 12:00 - 1:30 p.m. in the Seminar Room. Dr. Geraldine Skeete will be presenting the seminar, "Unstifling a Spirituality/ Homosexuality at Bay in 'Spirits in the Dark'.

The following is the abstract for the seminar:

In the Christian worldview the metaphorization of homosexual acts as vile, sinful and unclean finds its genesis in Holy Scripture. The Church, therefore, has been a primary denouncer not of homosexuality per se, but of homosexual acts, citing passages from both the Old and New Testaments. Ironically, in H. Nigel Thomas’s 1993 novel Spirits in the Dark the homosexual uses religion to achieve positive self-identification. The celibate protagonist, Jerome Quashee, initially harbours a strong rejection of mainstream Christianity,but eventually surrenders to a religion that embraces a syncretism of both Christian and African elements in order to find peace with his repressed homosexuality. He must ultimately undergo inner and outer resistance and struggles to reconcile his sexuality and religious faith. An analysis of Thomas’s manipulation of language and his representation of the biblical and secular taboos surrounding homosexuality reveals ways in which the novel presents binaries such as White / Black and heterosexuality / homosexuality as Jerome Exorcises his dark spirits of fear and self-loathing.