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Amsterdam Research Centre for Gender and Sexuality ARC-GS

Sex After Liberation: the Politics of Sexual Freedom in Postsocialist Ethiopia

ARC-GS Lecture by Prof. Serawit Debele

Soon after Ethiopia embraced liberal democracy in the early 1990s, Amharic newspapers and magazines turned to sexual pleasure to articulate their vision for social change, juxtaposing pleasure and freedom where pleasure appears as an expression of rights. Drawing on archives of sex, this talk theorizes “Ethiopia after socialism” through the moral and political economies of sexual freedom.
Date
20 November 2026
Time
15:30 -17:00
Room
A2.10
Prof. Serawit Debele.

Prof. Debele asks: What does this flourishing of sexual discourse reveal about freedom as lived at the dawn of consumer capitalism that addresses citizens as right-bearing sexual subjects? And with what theoretical and methodological perspective can we approach sex in post-socialist Ethiopia to grasp the tension between local specificities and global-historical entanglements?

Exploring these questions, the talk ponders on social change is mediated through what literary scholar Naminata Diabate (2022) calls “promises of pleasure,” and how these promises shape subjects of (sexual) freedom.

Register here

About the speaker

Serawit Debele is a professor of Gender, Sexuality and Religion with a focus on Africa and its Diaspora at the University of Bayreuth. She also serves as the deputy head of the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS).

Roeterseilandcampus - building A

Room A2.10
Nieuwe Achtergracht 166
1018 WV Amsterdam