Colonial Apparatus Research Articles

Rebellion contagion: Embodying black radical love in the westernised academy

AbstractMacro‐politics inform micro‐practices. As such, no institution and role‐player within can be thought outside of this framework. As such, the personal begets the political as the political begets the personal. Against the extractive posture of the university that imagines every‐body and every‐thing through colonial apparatus that are also individualising, with this work, I immerse myself in the communities that raised me, whose values I embody as I walk the university. I posit my travails and ruminations in the university as Black Radical Love. I argue, in a manner of speaking, that one cannot display cares against grand injustices while turning a blind eye to small ones. In this way, I make a distinction (following others) between “be‐ing in the university” and being of the university” to highlight the hidden curriculum of the university and how unscripted Black Radical Love always rises to unveil and engage with the violences embedded in the corporate, westernized university. I show glimpses of decolonial, Afrocentric futures that are intricately woven with and into Black Radical Love. They account for the robustness of my scholarship and general movement in the academy.

Magahiya Doms and untouchability

Magahiya Doms have historically suffered from the double stigma of criminality and untouchability. They were notified as a Criminal Tribe in 1913 but also came to be recognised as useful for the colonial state due to their role as sweepers and scavengers. The missionaries and colonial officials attempted to order and fix the identities of communities such as these. In this paper, I discuss the concept of touch and untouchability in relation to the caste system in India. I juxtapose the idea of the body proposed by Ambedkar in Annihilation of Caste against the caste body and colonised body. Against the static and closed identity which the state attempted to bestow on the Doms, I seek to understand the body itself as processual, moving and relational. Magahiya Doms resisted colonial moves to stabilise social identities every step of the way. I also discuss the role of the colonial apparatus as a mediator that sought to impose a new order of hygiene. The colonial mechanisms of governance cut off the older ties and relational tendencies and placed themselves and their logistics as chains through which frozen identities could communicate. In this way, they partitioned off bodies and settled themselves as chains connecting the partitioned bodies. After being de-notified as a Criminal Tribe, the Magahiya Doms were categorised as a Scheduled Caste in 1952.

Nkemvou, Nelo, and Tabula

Abstract The Cameroon Grassfields faced extreme violence during German colonization in the early twentieth century. The German colonial army used various strategies, such as armed attacks, executions, looting, hostage-taking, and other repressive measures. After military subjugation by the German colonial army, however, the use of various forms of violence continued. Germans made use of multiple strategies in this mountain region to procure laborers for the colonial apparatus on the coast. At the same time, they claimed to be fighting “slave trade” and “slavery.” However, the coercive measures and violence used for this purpose were and are often characterized by those affected and their descendants as forms of “slave trade” and “slavery.” This article adopts an actor-centered approach that combines written sources with corresponding oral accounts and sheds light on local narratives about “labor recruitment.” This will reveal how and why colonized actors conceptualized the systems of coercion they resisted against differently from the German colonizers. The article argues that taking the perspective of colonized actors into account calls into question the distinction between “slave trading” and “labor recruitment.”

French Colonial Policies in West Africa: Power Dynamics, Cultural Impositions and Economic Legacies

The complex dynamics of French colonial policies in West Africa during European imperialism played a crucial role in streamlining administrative procedures and consolidating control over the indigenous African population. This colonial framework not only imposed a distinct sense of identity on African communities but also created deep stratification within these societies. Implementing the direct rule system, an essential aspect of French colonial administration, facilitated imposing laws and regulations that often marginalized traditional authority structures. As a result, a symbiotic relationship emerged between the African colonies and France, with the former serving as essential suppliers of resources crucial for sustaining France's growing industrial enterprises. This paper delves into the intricate nuances of the French colonial policies and their enduring impact on West Africa. By critically examining the assimilation and association policies, the study elucidates the power dynamics, cultural impositions, and economic implications that characterized the colonial experience of French colonies in West Africa. Unpacking the complexities of the colonial governance framework highlights the systemic disparities and cultural alienation perpetuated by the French colonial apparatus, underscoring the persistent socio-economic challenges and cultural subjugation that continue to shape the contemporary West African landscape. By exploring historical injustices and postcolonial complexities, the study emphasizes the urgent need for a holistic and inclusive approach to postcolonial development, advocating for preserving cultural heritage and promoting equitable socio-economic progress within the region.

Opaque Aesthetics of Freedom: Romaine la Prophètesse, the Haitian Revolution, and Black Diasporic Possibilities

The Haitian Revolution—the famed historical event that redefined the liberatory possibilities of modernity and altered Black diasporic subjectivities—offers a wealth of knowledge that has yet to be fully analyzed. This article explores the diasporic and queered possibilities embedded in the story and aesthetic representation of the revolutionary actor, Romaine la Prophètesse. This liminal figure of the early revolutionary era galvanized thousands of formerly enslaved people to fight against the French colonial apparatus while embodying a feminine, creative, and spiritual gendered subjectivity, diverting from the overdetermined masculinist and militaristic ethos of the time. Nonetheless, most accounts of Romaine are tangentially mentioned and do not explore the rebellious possibilities of this historical figure’s imaginative gendered presentation. To counter the analytical impasse imposed by Western and authoritative archives and methodologies, the author employs a “radical interdisciplinarity”—a crucial Black studies approach—to unearth the potential of creative genders and their role in upholding Black diasporic epistemes of freedom and resistance. Paying attention to Haitian abstract art, and particularly the work of Haiti-born, Montreal-based multidisciplinary artist Manuel Mathieu, the author explores how his pieces blur temporal, spatial and ontological registers offering a glimpse into undecipherable, yet affective, genealogies of “freedom dreams.” Indeed, through the use of a conceptual frameworks that honours the “right to opacity,” the author suggests that the obscured mythology and the abstracted aesthetics of Romaine la Prophètesse allow for a genealogical reading of queer spiritual ontologies that are part of larger Black diasporic freedom epistemes and that are demonstrated through contemporary Haitian queer designations and advocacy work.

TURGAI REGION IN PRE-REVOLUTIONARY WORKS: IN THE CONTEXT OF “NEW IMPERIAL HISTORY”

The article deals with the Russian historiographical tradition of the pre-revolutionary period in relation to the Turgai region. The contribution of the main institutions of this region is analyzed: the Orenburg department of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, the Turgai regional statistical committee, the Orenburg scientific archival commission. As well as the figures of these institutions, who were also officials of the colonial apparatus: V.V. Katarinsky, I.I. Kraft, A.I. Dobrosmyslov and others, as well as Kazakh researchers. From the position of “new imperial policy” the main reasons of research interest dictated by the study of the region for the purpose of further colonization are shown. Nevertheless, these works are of great informational value. The study allows us to define the activities of pre-revolutionary scientists, both research and service, as cultural regeneration, contrary to the modern assessment of Russian scientists characterizing it as an imperial policy of acculturation.

Ресей империясының қазақ атқамінерлеріне қатысты саясаты (заңнамалық дереккөздер негізінде)

The article analyzes legislative sources of the Russian Empire and their data about the policy of the Russian Empire in relation to the Qazaq nobility. The issues of interaction between the Russian government and the Qazaq nobility, the policy of attracting the noble and influential representatives of Qazaq society to cooperate with the Russian administration for the implementation of colonial tasks of Russia are considered on the base of legislative acts of the Russian Empire. The analysis of legislative acts shows that the Russian authorities spared no expense to attract the Kazakh nobility to their side. The Russian Empire sought to form a loyal official corps among the local population to carry out its policy in the conquered region. For this purpose, it used various material incentives, including cash grants and gifts; allowed Qazaq sultans, bays and biys to own pastures as property, protected their property and allowed its inheritance; exempted Qazaq officials from paying taxes and various duties, and gave them the right to collect certain types of taxes from the Qazaq population. Representatives of the Qazaq nobility who showed loyalty to the empire were appointed to administrative positions in the tsarist colonial apparatus, became senior sultans, volost rulers, biys, etc. They were entrusted with some judicial functions in the Qazaq Steppe. To conduct colonial office work locally, scribes and interpreters were trained in special schools. The Muslim clergy was also attracted to the Russian service. Recognition of the privileged rights of the Qazaq nobility, which supported and implemented the official policy of the Russian Empire, allowed it to fully establish itself in the Qazaq Steppe. The Qazaq nobility became part of the colonial administration apparatus of Russia.

The petition of a Qazaq official, Turdybek Syrtanov: an introduction to the Qazaq life strategies in the tsarist colonial era

On example of the biography of Turdybek (Turlybek) Syrtanov (1860–1906), an interpreter and translator under the Semirechye regional administration, the article deals with the formation of a new Qazaq social group of officials in the service of the Russian colonial apparatus. The establishment of the Russian colonial regime in Qazaq Zhetysu (Semirechye) and the administrative integration of Qazaq territories into the Russian Empire had transformed Qazaq political and social institutions so that Qazaq elites had to rethink their political functions. The representatives of the former Qazaq nobility could now occupy only lower elected positions in the new administrative units, managing volosts and auls. At the level of regions and districts there were no Qazaqs. In such circumstances, the position of volostnoy upravitel’ (volost ruler) allowing certain lineages to enrich themselves, became the main source of power, among the Qazaqs. To gain and retain this power for themselves and their offspring, the volost rulers used financial resources, trade, and personal connections with the colonial administration. The biography of Turdybek Syrtanov demonstrates a different way of adaptation to the new colonial context. In the Matay-Qaptagay (Arasan) Volost of the Kapal District of the Semirechye Region, the leading role belonged to the qydyrali lineage of the matay-qaptagay clan of the nayman tribe of the Middle Zhuz. The representatives of this lineage dominated in the area and monopolized the elective position of volostnoy upravitel’. The qulshan lineage of the same matay-qaptagay clan retained only the functions of biys in their own administrative aul. The head of the Qulshans. Syrttan Bokin (1837?–1916) sent his two eldest sons, Turdybek and Barlybek (1866–1914), to a Russian school in Kapal and then to a gymnasium in Verny. The article examines the motives encouraging the Qazaqs to send their children to Russian schools and making them enter the public service. The main document analyzed in the article is the petition of Turdybek Syrtanov dated May 18, 1902, which is preserved in the Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The document shows the Qazaqs' perception of their own world and its representation for the Russian administration. At the end of the article, the document commented by the author is reproduced in full.

Present Pasts of Colonial Modernity: Embroideries by Lucie Kamuswekera

Present Pasts of Colonial Modernity: Embroideries by Lucie Kamuswekera

Inspectors of the Raj: A Pedagogy of Critical Conservatism in Odisha

This essay investigates new articulations of belonging and community identity that emerged in Odisha, on the eastern coast of India, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century through the works of an inspector of schools. Largely taken in the historiography to be mere bureaucrats, inspectors of schools, especially in colonial Odisha, were an important component in the administration of the province, and emerged as arbiters of taste, doyens of Odia literature, and public intellectuals. This essay proposes that their negotiation with the colonial apparatus and prevalent Odia linguistic nationalist spirit was carried out through a novel cultural ideology, ‘critical conservatism’. Deploying a comparative framework with the development of conservatism in Bengal, this essay examines the uniqueness of the conservative impulse in Odisha, thereby suggesting a rethinking of conservatism as a cultural enterprise. Moving away from the focus on the literary works of Fakir Mohan Senapati, this article throws light on the works and lives of other figures of modernity such as Radhanath Ray, Nanda Kishore Bala, Madhusudan Rao, and the Satyabadi School, a unique intervention in pedagogy taken up in Odisha in the early twentieth century.

Iklan Aesthetics in Niger: Identity and Adornment from Servility to Self-agency

<i>Iklan</i> Aesthetics in Niger: Identity and Adornment from Servility to Self-agency

Madness as Subversion: Decolonizing the Doubly Colonized Female Self in Wide Sargasso Sea

This research seeks to investigate the language of female madness as the central trope of the decolonizing struggle against double colonization. Rhys’ female protagonist in Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette, is alienated and deprived of her original identity in race and class. The hegemonic process of colonial patriarchy embedded in the victimization of the female subject objectifies her through her double marginalization at the hands of colonial apparatus and patriarchy. Her decolonizing outburst against double colonization, when expressed through an unconventional language, is viewed as an act of madness by the society. This research routes its argument through the so-called sanity of a societal structure rooted in the dispensation of colonial atrocity which, as a consequence, gives rise to mental imbalance (madness) of the female protagonist. This study, located in the qualitative paradigm, develops its methodology on the qualitative grounds with an interpretive and exploratory design. It uses textual analysis as research method and deploys theoretical support from Postcolonial Feminism with a focus on ‘decolonization’ and ‘double colonization.’

Mau Mau as Method

AbstractDuring the period of the Kenya Emergency (1952–1960), an assemblage of anticolonial forces waged war against the British colonial apparatus and its allies. Their notoriety would be crystallized in a single, enigmatic phrase: “Mau Mau.” Through considering the character of both contemporary and current framings, this article contends that Mau Mau exists as a historical method in itself, rather than simply as a phenomenon subjected to the analytical frameworks of historians. Mau Mau’s mythological dimension—something acknowledged in even its earliest formal studies—has rarely been focused upon in any sustained way that centers its implications for historical methodology. Yet it existed as a signifier set within enormous discursive webs and systems of information that people interfaced with in myriad ways. More concretely, understandings of and debates about Mau Mau drove human action through their articulation in realms such as (counter)insurgency, politics, and popular culture in geographically-disparate regions of the world. Approaching “events” such as Mau Mau in this fashion reveals the layout of these discursive webs and how they formed around flows of imperial capital, anticolonial resistance, and professional networks.

The Dalit Soldiers and the Colonial Apparatus: Lived Experiences of the Paraiyans in the Madras Presidency Army, 1801–1895

The article deals with the Paraiyans, one of the Dalit sub-caste of the Madras Presidency, and their transformation from a marginalized group to one which was believed to be one of the worthwhile recruits for the colonial army. The narrative delves on their exalted status as a military subaltern within the general set up of the army department and also traces their subsequent socio-political positions in the southern society under the colonial rule after the 1880s. Despite their primary dependence on agriculture for their survival, several of them preferred to be enlisted in the army under the colonial rule in India for better livelihood and social standing. The official/archival documents highlighted that the Madras Presidency army had given much benefit to them and became a source of their social occupational mobility. Thus, It has been given them a new sense of identity and power and their empowerment as a caste.

Peering Inside the White Container: Feminism and Antiracism in the Work of JFSR

Peering Inside The White ContainerFeminism and Antiracism in the Work of JFSR Sailaja Krishnamurti (bio) As a new board member, I welcome this opportunity to respond to Judith Plaskow’s essay, “Race, Racism, and the JFSR,” part of a series of actions that Feminist Studies in Religion (FSR) has undertaken as a response to growing concern about anti-Black racism and carceral violence in the United States. When I was invited to join the board in 2020, I was glad to become part of an academic community that has made so many important interventions in the field. But as Plaskow rightly observes, for many of us scholars of color, the journal still feels like a “white container.” To understand this problem, I invite readers to reflect on three questions. First, what does the word race mean in FSR’s action plan? There is a critical difference between advocating for “diversity” and committing to antiracist work. Let me contextualize my question by first interrogating my own position in this discussion. I am a queer cisgender woman of Brahmin (upper caste) Hindu South Asian descent. I live and work in Canada, the carceral state next door. As a racialized settler on colonized land, and as an academic of color with tenure, I occupy positions of marginalization and of privilege in academia and in North American society. I locate myself this way as a practice of interrogative positionality, a method which asks that we continually reexamine our locations, orientations, and relationships to power.1 From this vantage point, I can see that I am one of those non-Black scholars of color whose numbers, Plaskow notes, have grown on the board in recent years while the number of Black scholars has stayed steady. Non-Black women of color are indeed often used as an alibi in equity initiatives: the number of women of [End Page 51] color goes up, and “diversity” is achieved.2 Why is it that non-Black women of color like me grow in number in academic spaces when Black women do not? The core problem—that white supremacy, class inequality, and anti-Black racism are deeply embedded in American and global history and culture—cannot be addressed through institutional diversity initiatives that do not radically change institutions. It requires an explicitly antiracist approach that understands anti-Black racism and settler colonialism as institutional ontologies and as transnational phenomena. A second question therefore arises: What does it mean to engage in “the study of religion” when we know that our field owes its existence to colonial, orientalist, and imperial institutions? These are the same institutions that are responsible for exploiting people of color all over the world. Some traditions, and some scholars, sit more comfortably in relation to the term religion than others. Assumed divisions between insider and outsider, practitioner and scholar continue to shape our theories and methodologies. It is inevitable, therefore, that efforts to diversify representation within the field will expose the limits of what “religion” itself can contain. Plaskow writes that “like systemic racism, Christian hegemony is built into the fabric of the academy and society in ways FSR has been unable to escape” (7). Indeed, white Christian hegemony is so deeply enmeshed in the academy that we must ask how we can challenge it as long as we are so invested in maintaining its terms and structures. Here is one small and unscientific example. A brief search of JFSR’s hundreds of articles shows that only eighty-three contain the word Hindu, and of those, only sixteen are authored or coauthored by scholars who are (or at least whom I know to be) racialized people. I offer this observation to make two points: a) diversity in the coverage of religious traditions does not always equal racial diversity, and b) white scholars continue to dominate many fields of religious studies, particularly those which have been historically connected to the colonial apparatus. In her 2020 blog post “Not Just the Syllabus, Throw the Whole Discipline in the Trash,” Harvard MTS scholar Ciarra Jones writes that the “foundation of American academia is white supremacy. By refusing to reimagine not only the canon but also the theories and methods...

Between Concealment and Revelation

Abstract After the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, the Empress Dowager Cixi, the de facto head of the Qing court, undertook projects to reconstitute her identity through the production of photographs and paintings. While they helped to reestablish and strengthen her ties with foreign nations, the paintings and photographs also enabled Cixi to contemplate the fluidity of identity and, subsequently, challenge the authority of colonial narratives. Variations of similar poses and the use of mirrors in highly staged photographs reveal the Empress Dowager's sly civility and mimicry of colonial photographic conventions to subvert the imperial gaze. Combining a reclamation of female authors' voices, including those of Katherine Carl, Sarah Pike Conger, Yu Derling, and Yu Rongling, with close visual analyses of select photographs placed within particular political, historical, and religious contexts, reveals the ways in which the Empress Dowager used photography not only as a space to negotiate political agency, but also as a subversive means to challenge the entire colonial apparatus of knowledge production that hinged so critically on the belief in photography's veracity and authenticity.

Orientalism without Power?

Abstract Sent by the Chinese government on medical missions, Chinese female ob-gyns have served in rural and small-town public hospitals in Algeria and Morocco for more than fifty years. Yet little is known about the medical encounters or how the ob-gyns perceived patients and their health cultures. Drawing on untapped Chinese medical-mission literature, this article shows that the ob-gyns have since the 1980s constructed certain images of North African women as an inferior other, either reckless biological reproducers or incompetent health providers. In their criticisms of reproductive practices and female professionalism, they viewed local health policies and institutions through the prisms of modern obstetrics and Chinese gender rhetoric and ultimately bolstered their professional status at home in China. The article also suggests that while the ob-gyns were not attached to a hard-power colonial state apparatus, they retained considerable situational power over their patients.

Epistemology of surveillance: Revealing unmarked forms of discipline and punishment in Israeli academia.

This paper analyzes the unmarked forms of discipline and punishment employed against Palestinian researchers in Israeli academia, attempting to decolonize it through critical knowledge production. Based on interviews with 15 researchers from a cross-section of academic institutions in Israel, the paper identifies subtle mechanisms of discipline and punishment, directed toward normalizing the epistemology of the colonized. The findings suggest that the gatekeepers of Israeli academia not only seek to maintain the existing racial hierarchy between Israeli and Palestinian researchers but also seek to "eliminate" the indigenous epistemology of the latter through mechanisms of hidden surveillance, used to control them as colonized subjects unable to challenge the Zionist ideology that is an essential aspect of Israeli academia. The current paper aims to unpack these invisible mechanisms of surveillance, which are part of a broader colonial apparatus aiming to maintain not only territorial sovereignty but also epistemologic sovereignty.

Chai as a Colonial Creation: The British Empire’s Cultivation of Tea as a Popular Taste and Habit Among South Asians

For Indians, chai, or spiced black tea, is a sign of hospitality, served within families, workplaces, and at train stations. While most Indians now perceive chai to be an essential and unquestionable part of daily life, this was not the case until the early twentieth century. While today, masala tea (or masala chai) is seen as a traditional South Asian custom, my findings suggest that the habit of drinking tea was actually thrust upon Indians through a colonial apparatus of the British Raj that utilized indentured labor, plantations, and exploitative trade practices. In this research, I deconstruct the misunderstanding that tea is native to India by gathering records of the first tea plantations and advertisements designed to popularize tea in India. I also present evidence of British establishment of tea and sugar plantations, which preceded the mass production and distribution of chai for export and internal use. Lastly, I analyze advertisements that were used in the British campaign to popularize chai in India. The tea trade exemplifies the short and long-term inequalities that resulted from British occupation in South Asia, as it was a key factor in motivating and funding colonial expansion and in solidifying colonial control. Beyond colonizing land and bodies through tea, the British succeeded in colonizing Indians’ aesthetics and taste.

Political Principles of the Cuban Socialism Doctrine: Towards the History of Emergence and Development

Socialism as a political trend and a system of certain ideological positions has been experiencing a kind of renaissance in recent years. Cuban socialism is a special phenomenon of recent history, which has continuously existed and developed for six decades in the most difficult conditions of the North American foreign economic blockade and in the presence of other threats of a socio-political nature. Solving numerous issues of practical and transformative activity, the Cuban socialist doctrine generalized and formulated many new theoretical propositions, a number of which will be able to significantly influence the formation of an updated socialist doctrine claiming the ideological and semantic possibility of a world alternative.The paper analyzes the basic principles characterizing the doctrine of Cuban socialism in matters of ethics, relations with the church, the foundations of education, assessing the prospects of the institution of statehood in the 21st century, and evaluating other political projects that had points of joint intersection with Cuban socialist theory and practice.Cuban socialism is a specific phenomenon that arose as a result of a number of objective and subjective factors. By the end of the 1950s the century-and-a-half struggle of Cubans against colonial and then neocolonial exploitation were intensified by the Soviet vector and its influence in the international arena as the second great power with the aggravation of the Cold War. These factors together with the “island life” on a par with the Catholic, peasant community of the majority of the population, the sacrifice and service of several generations of the young Cuban elite, the combination of the cult of courage and guerrilla traditions with the special cruelty and repressiveness of the Spanish colonial apparatus of the 21st century, and then relying on American support of the Cuban dictatorships of the first half of the 20th century is a set of factors that gave rise to the “spring effect” in the social consciousness of the island society. In addition to objectively determined reasons, a huge role in the long-term maturation of the conditions for the emergence of the Cuban socialist project was played by the traditional personality for the Ibero-American culture. All of the above would have been impossible outside of the long-term activities of a whole galaxy of brilliant Cuban political leaders.