“They just need to empower themselves:” reproducing queer (neo)liberalism in LGBTS Empowerment discourses of representatives of LGBTS Human Rights NGOs in Ghana

ABSTRACT In this article, I examine how LGBT empowerment is discursively constructed within the material context of postcolonial Ghana, arguing that LGBT empowerment emerges as a contentious site of “glocalized assemblage” that condenses multiple meanings and spatio-temporal histories of colonization, gender, and sexuality to produce contradictory and paradoxical effects on Sassoi. I explain how neoliberal frames of governmentality are embedded in LGBT-centred empowerment programmes through discursive evocations of community, personal responsibility and human rights education. In conclusion, I argue for queer (post)colonial approaches to LGBT empowerment that open up spaces for radical imaginations to social change in Ghana and across the Global South.