Colonial Inscriptions: Race, Sex, and Class in Kenya

In Kenyan colonialist imagery, two contrasting groups were ostracized and demonized, the Kikuyu and the Maasai. They were constructed by European colonialists as representations of the noble savage and the deceitful servant, 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, and 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 which shaped inequalities, rivalries, and fantasies in colonial Kenya. She explores narratives of domination and subordination, arguing that Europeans brought with them to Africa certain racist notions that were subsequently transformed to the needs of a colonial power structure. 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.