Gendering Colonialism

This paper draws on archival evidence, supplemented with eye-witness accounts of the Bukusu colonial conquest. Employing Ashis Nandy’s schema of the psychology of colonialism and Homi Bhabha’s concept of cultural difference in an integrated theoretical approach, I demonstrate how the British incursion occasioned a clash of two ambivalent gender categories. Bukusu colonization was preceded by putative conceptions of manly character that elevated the imperial norms of masculinity over the indigenous Bukusu masculinity. Thus, the Lumboka-Chetambe War of 1895 was a manifestation of gendered ‘cultural difference’ that pitted the colonial gendered society against the Bukusu warrior masculinity. The aftermath of this war signaled the pronunciation of ‘cultural difference’ with the colonial space as a gendered site. Masculinity became salutary in contesting the shifting power relations of the early decades of the occupation

Ambivalence · Colonialism · Gender relations · Indigenous · Masculinity · World War II · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Australian History and Society