Envisioning African Intersex

“Envisioning African Intersex is a double bonus. Not only does it unpack the complex matter of intersexuality in ways that present the reader with several ‘aha!’ moments, but it also makes a refreshing statement about the steady efforts pursued in Africa to shed colonially imposed mindsets. Amanda Lock Swarr carefully and systematically debunks the pathologizing, exclusionary, and racialized depictions of intersex persons normally anchored in rigid and outdated gender binaries. A brilliant eye-opener.” - Sylvia Tamale, author of Decolonization and Afro-Feminism

“Robustly documenting the colonial roots of intersex diagnosis and its treatment protocol, Amanda Lock Swarr is the first to build an argument squarely on the interarticulation of colonial epistemologies of race and gender and intersex medicine. This important book articulates a decolonial vision for intersex resistance and will push intersex studies to grapple in a much more significant way with questions of coloniality and decoloniality. An imperative intervention.” - Hil Malatino, author of Trans Care

"Envisioning African Intersex is a compelling and provocative analysis of how medical and scientific authorities have imagined intersex (atypical sex development) in Africa and, just as important, how contemporary South African intersex activists have resisted these racist interpretations." - Elizabeth Reis, Journal of Medical Humanities

"Envisioning African Intersex galvanizes its readers to pay attention to the importance of intersex activism past and present." - M. Wolff, International Journal of African Historical Studies

"Envisioning African Intersex is a groundbreaking contribution not only to intersex studies, but to scholarship on the history of sex, race, and medicine. . . . While Envisioning African Intersex promises to be a foundational text in critical
intersex studies, it is also a methodological tour de force that seamlessly blends historical inquiry, ethnography, visual analysis, and decolonial, feminist, and queer theory." - Ryan Thoreson, African Studies Review

"This volume should be required reading for academics and laypersons alike who care about humanity. As a result of this study, intersex people are no longer invisible." - Mueni wa Muiu, Journal of Global South Studies

"The ability of Swarr to trace the perceptions, misperceptions, and origins of ideas of intersex to the colonial era highlights the supreme importance of understanding the indelible longevity of imperial influence on science and societal construction. Many chapters would serve well as introductory points of discussion for any university course. . . . This longue durée of the story of intersex is much needed, not only to correct the wrongs of the past, but also to give us a language to confront our present." - Jacob Ivey, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences

"Envisioning African Intersex is an excellent text that helps provide a much-needed corrective in contemporary intersex scholarship, by addressing how intersex discrimination is directly tied to colonial racism, and that the dominant focus on white intersex activism denies the lived experiences and issues affecting intersex people of color. . . . This text, overall, is a worthwhile addition to the reference library of any biological anthropologist interested in intersex, the effects of colonial, scientific, and medical racism, and intersex activist efforts, and would be excellent for use in upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses." - Claudia M. Astorino, American Journal of Biological Anthropology

"Envisioning African Intersex offers a clear toolkit for scholars and activists seeking to reckon with the ossified remains of colonial frameworks that still dominate discussions of gender and sexuality on the African continent. Swarr’s commitment to her subjects, particularly in the use of innovative methods, offers the kind of decentering, creative, and critical methodologies that are instructive for all scholars of gender and sexuality, especially those working with and alongside minoritized communities and invested in decolonial thinking." - Xavier Livermon, Feminist Formations

"This book is an important contribution to queer theory about the global South and can be used by scholars interested in gender activism. It will also appeal to scholars of medical anthropology, queer and transgender studies, postcolonialism, and African feminism." - Ijeoma C. Opara and Chan C. Croeser, Feminist Formations

"Envisioning African Intersex is a foundational, groundbreaking, and thought-provoking book that delves into the complex and multifaceted colonial realities for intersex South Africans and the continent at large." - Tushabe wa Tushabe, Feminist Formations

"[A] powerful and vital book. . . . As a scholar of critical intersex studies and queer feminist science and technology studies, I find Swarr’s Envisioning African Intersex to be indispensable. . . ." - David A. Rubin, Feminist Formations

"A contribution to African studies, Envisioning African Intersex is also a playbook for the decolonization of western social and medical science understandings of intersex from several locations in the Global South. . . . [It] will be of great use to sociologists keen to work in this area, as well as to those who have been doing so for a long time." - Peter Hegas, David A Griffith, Marta Prandelli, and Annette Smithrty, Sociology