Description
Book SynopsisElizabeth W. Williams traces the genealogy of a narrative about the primitive normativity of African sexuality that British colonial authorities in Kenya used to justify their control over African populations.
Trade Review“Elizabeth W. Williams brings fresh insights from queer theory and Black feminist theory to the study of settler colonialism in East Africa. Through analyzing an expansive set of textual sources, she helpfully introduces discourses of sexual normativity and deviance as key to understanding colonial processes of racial formation and ongoing politics in the region.” -- Lynn M. Thomas, author of * Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction, and the State in Kenya *
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Primitive Normativity is a brilliant synthesis of queer theory, colonial history, and African studies. For Elizabeth W. Williams, the ‘strange settler space’ of Kenya depended upon a view of Africans as temporally backward and therefore safe from the dangers of sexually deviant, ‘over-civilized’ Europeans. Nimbly tracing discourses from the colonial archive, Williams offers an assessment of colonial sexuality and power that is as witty as it is incisive and compelling.” -- T. J. Tallie, author of * Queering Colonial Natal: Indigeneity and the Violence of Belonging in Southern Africa *
Table of ContentsAbbreviations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Primitive Normativity 1
1. The Intellectual Roots of Primitive Normativity 24
2. Sleeping Dictionaries and Mobile Metropoles: Female (A)Sexuality in the Silberrad Scandal of 1908 42
3. “Stoop Low to Conquer”: Primitive Normativity and Trusteeship in the Kenyan “Indian Crisis” of 1923 69
4. White Peril: Rape, Race, and Contamination 92
5. Queering Settler Romance: The Reparative Eugenic Landscape in Nora Strange’s Kenyan Novels 117
6. Eating the Other: Erotic Consumption in Anti-Mau Mau Discourse 139
Conclusion 163
Notes 169
Bibliography 211
Index 223
