ENVISIONING AFRICAN INTERSEX, challenging colonial and racist legacies in South African medicine

236pp., paperback, Duke University Press, Durham, 2023

ISBN: 9781478019619

Amanda Lock Swarr on decolonial actions by intersex South Africans from the 1990s to the present; the work of organizers such as Sally Gross, the first openly intersex activist in Africa and a global pioneer of intersex legislation; African social media activism that advocates for intersex justice, and the mistreatment of South African Olympian Caster Semenya. 

"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 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debunks the pathologizing, exclusionary, and racialized depictions of intersex persons normally anchored in rigid and outdated gender binaries.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

Amanda Lock Swarr is Associate Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. She is the author of Sex in Transition: Remaking gender and race in South Africa, and co-editor of Critical Transnational Feminist Praxis.