African Intimacy and Love with No Pretense: The Erotics of Diaspora in Zina Saro-Wiwa's Eaten by the Heart

Abstract:This article examines Zina Saro-Wiwa's documentary project and video installation Eaten by the Heart, which explores intimacy, heartbreak, and love performances among Africans, both on the continent and in the diaspora. Considering the role of the erotic in how diasporic subjects conceptualize and negotiate their attachments to their homeland and host country, Akinbola argues that Saro-Wiwa marks the Black diasporic body as a site of erotic agency. In doing so, Saro-Wiwa simultaneously acknowledges and resists the burden of respectability and cultural norms that hide and dismiss the importance of emotional expression, intimacy, and vulnerability in the lives of African and African diasporic people.