Colonial Inscriptions: Race, Sex, and Class in Kenya / Edition 1

by Carolyn Martin Shaw

Overview

In Kenyan colonialist imagery, the Kikuyu were vilified as deceitful servants while the Maasai were romanticized as noble savages in a fashion similar to American representation of the Black slave and the "wild" Indian. Carolyn Martin Shaw examines this imagery in the works of historians and ethnographers, as well as in novels and films.

Through the works of Louis Leakey, Jomo Kenyatta, Elspeth Huxley, and Isak Dinesen, along with her own ethnographic research, Martin Shaw investigates the discourses that shaped inequalities, rivalries, and fantasies in colonial Kenya. She explores narratives of domination and subordination, arguing that Europeans brought to Africa long-established ideas of difference that influenced racial inequalities in the colonial situation.

Including discussion of the controversial practice of female genital mutilation, Colonial Inscriptions presents an African American woman's views of how images of African colonialism have been influenced by European and American racism and sexual fantasies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780816625253
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	05/17/1995
Edition description:	First edition
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	5.88(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Carolyn Martin Shaw is an associate professor and chair of the Board of Studies in the anthropology department, and Provost of Kresge College at the University of California, Santa Cruz.