Queer counterpoints: Making ‘mistakes’ in loveLife’s ‘Make Your Move’

Drawing upon queer theory and Said’s notion of the counterpoint, the article analyses the launch episode of a reality television series produced by the South African NGO loveLife, which focused on a young, self-identified lesbian woman in Soweto. We offer a counter example to discourses of the powerless victimhood of Black, gender and sexually non-normative individuals in South African townships. We unveil contrapuntally the pushes and pulls between the voice of the authoritative facilitator, aligned with loveLife’s HIV-prevention and youth leadership development methodology, and that of the young woman herself, who volunteered for the intervention, focusing on their disagreement on how best to ‘accommodate’ the prevailing social norms of contemporary South Africa. We also discuss the counterpoint between us – a discourse analyst observing the effects of particular articulations on South African society related to loveLife’s social aims, and the producer of the episode, charged with the protection of the NGO’s brand identity. We conclude that norms governing gender and sexuality in a rapidly evolving society such as South Africa’s are best understood as presenting analysis with dilemmas and contradictions, and that contrapuntal reading is a valuable tool for bringing these tensions under scrutiny without succumbing to the urge to resolve them.

Tommaso M Milani et al, Queer counterpoints: Making ‘mistakes’ in loveLife’s ‘Make Your Move’, Sexualities (24, 1-2) pp. . Copyright © 2020. DOI: 10.1177/1363460719896971. Users who receive access to an article through a repository are reminded that the article is protected by copyright and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses. Users may also download and save a local copy of an article accessed in an institutional repository for the user's personal reference. For permission to reuse an article, please follow our Process for Requesting Permission.

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Work Title Queer counterpoints: Making ‘mistakes’ in loveLife’s ‘Make Your Move’
Access
Open Access
Creators
  1. Tommaso M. Milani
  2. Scott Burnett
Keyword
  1. Counterpoint
  2. Critical discourse analysis
  3. Media production
  4. Queer theory
  5. Social change
License In Copyright (Rights Reserved)
Work Type Article
Publisher
  1. Sexualities
Publication Date March 11, 2020
Publisher Identifier (DOI)
  1. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460719896971
Deposited January 23, 2024

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  • Added Article_2020_Milani_and_Burnett_Sexualities-1.pdf
  • Added Creator Tommaso Milani
  • Added Creator Burnett Scott
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  • Updated Keyword Show Changes
    Keyword
    • Counterpoint, Critical discourse analysis, Media production, Queer theory, Social change
  • Renamed Creator Tommaso M. Milani Show Changes
    • Tommaso Milani
    • Tommaso M. Milani
  • Renamed Creator Scott Burnett Show Changes
    • Burnett Scott
    • Scott Burnett
  • Updated