Colonial Narratives Research Articles

A Documentary Narration about the Steppe Slavery or a Colonial Narrative: Essay “Ivan Vasil'evich Podurov” by S.N. Sevast'yanov

A Documentary Narration about the Steppe Slavery or a Colonial Narrative: Essay “Ivan Vasil'evich Podurov” by S.N. Sevast'yanov

More-than-human ‘rhuthmanalysis’ in Mónica Giron’s art installation Ajuar para un conquistador

This paper explores the relationships between humans and more-than-humans through the analysis of the rhythmic elements of the contemporary art installation Ajuar para un conquistador. An interdisciplinary approach bridges Art Studies and More-Than-Human Geographies to examine Ajuar and its environmental concerns, including the relationships between human and non-human worlds. Through ‘rhuthmanalysis’ – a new concept and word developed in the paper – textual and image analysis, and conversations with the artist, this study examines the social, cultural, and ecological meshwork of rhythms articulated within and by the art installation. ‘Rhuthmanalysis’ expands upon Henri Lefebvre and Catherine Régulier’s rhythmanalytic project by incorporating Indigenous knowledge and an ecocritical standpoint while redefining the understanding of rhythm. The analysis explores how Ajuar, concerned with the endangerment of Patagonian birds, promotes a performative understanding of the artwork’s capacities in the context of the interplay between the affective dimensions and politics of the creation of the Argentine nation-state. The paper argues that Ajuar participates in the social and political production of space and place, opening new forms of being together and challenging colonial narratives through a rhythmic lens. Moreover, this study seeks to offer a singular perspective on how approaching art as a rhythmic configuration of an intricate choreography of coexistence can provide unique insights into space and the environment. The paper concludes that ‘rhuthmanalysis’ is a privileged tool to address the need for a transdisciplinary methodology capable of giving account of the mutual unfolding of human and non-human existences and decolonising posthumanist geographies and rhythm studies.

'All the progressive forms of life are built up on the attraction of sex': Development and the social function of the sexual instinct in late 19th- and early 20th-century Western European sexology.

This article explores the relationship between sexual science and evolutionary models of human development and progress. It examines the ways in which late 19th- and early 20th-century Western European sexual scientists constructed the sexual instinct as an evolutionary force that not only served a reproductive purpose, but was also pivotal to the social, moral, and cultural development of human societies. Sexual scientists challenged the idea that non-reproductive sexualities were necessarily perverse, pathological, or degenerative by linking sexual desire to the evolution of sociality, often focusing on forms of relationality and care that exceeded biological kinship. As a result, non-reproductive sexual expressions, including homosexual and non-reproductive heterosexual behaviours, were interpreted as manifestations of a sexual instinct operating in the service of human development. These claims were reliant on cross-cultural and historical comparisons of sexual values, behaviours, and customs that rehearsed and reinforced imperial narratives of development premised on racialized, gendered, and classed hierarchies. Sexual scientists mapped diverse sexual behaviours in terms of their perceived evolutionary benefits, contributing to colonial narratives that distinguished between different cultures according to imagined trajectories of development. These contestations around the sexual instinct and its developmental functions played a vital role in allowing sexual science to authorize itself as a field of knowledge that promised to provide expertise required to manage sexual life and secure the global development of human civilization.

Making Home, Unmaking Domesticity: Love, Joy, and Other-than-Human Worlds in Kamloopa

Kamloopa: An Indigenous Matriarch Story by Kim Senklip Harvey (Syilx and Tsilhqot’in) which won the 2020 Governor General’s Literary Award for English-language drama, has been discussed by critics and scholars especially regarding Harvey’s decision not to invite critics to write formal reviews of the recent production in Toronto and to only invite “love letters” from Indigenous women for the premier production in Vancouver. This article offers a reading of Kamloopa that unpacks how Harvey’s refusal and radically different kind of invitation to engage is in continuation with the world of Kamloopa. It focuses on celebrations of love and joy as assertions of cultural and bodily sovereignty rooted in Indigenous women’s love for each other and their relationships with the more-than-human world. Following the three women characters who leave their “white” apartment in East Vancouver to go on a road trip to the largest powwow on the West Coast, the article studies how Kamloopa disavows the politics of the colonial domestic as it relates to the history of violence on Indigenous women in residential schools and the MMIWG2S crisis. It discusses how the women in Kamloopa also reject confinement in colonial narratives of violence that are tied with the material confinement of domesticity. The article argues that Harvey’s refusal of formal theatre reviews is in continuity with the play’s resistance of settler colonial “domestication” of Indigenous women’s lives, relations, and art.

Meditating Masculine Anxiety and (Post) Colonial Space in Lubis's Harimau! Harimau! and Patterson's Man-Eaters of Tsavo

This research is aimed at probing and comparing the masculine anxiety in colonial spaces of Lubis’s Harimau! Harimau! and Patterson’s The Man-eaters of Tsavo investigate similarities and differences between the subject position, the psychological impacts, and the psychic discourse of colonized and colonizer’s masculinities and male anxiety in terms of the colonial narrative. This comparison is essential for the subject position, and the psyche in the colonial narrative is claimed to be universal, which is not entirely true. Connell’s theory of masculinity is applied to investigate how the values of masculinity shape colonial experiences. This research employs a narratological method - employing the concept of focalization to scrutinize how the subject who see exercise the power of seeing and eventually constructing the subject position and the psyche of colonized and colonizer - psychoanalytic as well as postcolonial reading to reveal the psychological impact - of the character’s anxiety. The results are: 1) In both stories, the colonial settings are portrayed similarly even though the writers of the two stories came from different continents (West and East). 2) In a hostile colonial setting, the colonizer and the colonized are constructed similarly in dealing with anxiety. However, when colonized are in the subject position, they are constructed as anal-erotic characters or anti-heroes. Simultaneously they are described as devout Moslems. Meanwhile, the European counterpart, although not described as a devout Christian, was the story’s hero. As an Indonesian novel, this marks the point that it falls into Western colonial narratives’ patterns.

Must Dias fall? The politics and history of settler heritage in Southern Africa

ABSTRACT In the aftermath of the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ Movement and the ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests, the politics of heritage has been at the centre of new intellectual debates and political demands, especially in relation to the status of problematic historical monuments. This article examines a form of colonial heritage that has remained politically uncontested as well as unexplored in the specialised literature, i.e. monuments memorialising early modern European sea voyages, in particular those pertaining to Bartolomeu Dias, credited as the first European navigator to successfully complete the maritime route to India, through the Western Cape. The article suggests that Dias can be productively seen not only as a symbol of pre-apartheid European colonisation, but more importantly as part of apartheid’s broader settler colonial narrative of Southern African history. Drawing on the example of monuments exchanged between Lisbon and Pretoria in the early 1960s, the article argues that settler heritage making played into white South African narratives of European settler ‘pioneerism’, but also served to cement politico-diplomatic solidarity and friendship between white-ruled states in Southern Africa. By unveiling the politics and history of settler heritage in South Africa, the article hopes to convince its readers that Dias, too, must fall.

Colonial Possession and Gendered Labor: An Analysis of Women’s Role in the Bombay Cotton Textile Mills in the Late Nineteenth Century2

This paper critically examines the conditions of women workers in the textile mills of Bombay during the late nineteenth century. The analysis is conducted through the lens of 'possession' by the colonial State and its policies of labor regulation. The concept of 'possession' is explored at two levels. First, it is argued that women's vulnerability in the colonial narrative served as the foundation for the arbitrary ‘protection’ policies devised by colonial authorities in the form of factory legislation. Second, it is highlighted that factory legislation established colonial control over women's gendered roles, categorizing them as 'unskilled' labor. The introduction of the Indian Factory Act of 1891 further restricted women's mobility within the factory space and regulated their working patterns, including working hours and days, ultimately leading to a higher unemployment rate among women workers. Furthermore, the Act justified irregular and underpaid wages for women.
 This paper highlights that the factory legislation, intended to protect women from their vulnerable position made them more vulnerable resulting in their unemployment. This examination of the gendered nature of the Bombay mills aims to trace the global postcolonial history of wage gaps and gender distinctions at work back to their colonial origins. Overall, this study contributes to our understanding of how colonial policies have had a lasting impact on labor practices and gender relations in postcolonial societies.

Being (in)formed by indigenous voices: First steps to using graphic narratives to decolonise speculative fiction

The Greenlandic visual artist Nuka K. Godtfredsen and his literary and scientific collaborators have produced a series of four graphic narratives to represent distinct moments in Greenland's history, spanning the pre-colonised and colonial period. These narratives employ aspects of magic realism and adopt an approach to narrative that focuses on the supernatural and presents modes of being that contrast with their audiences' understanding of realities that are ordinarily (only) visible. I argue that these graphic narratives use strategies from speculative fiction that frame the modern European presence in Greenland and the narrative of colonialism as one of several multiple realities in the Arctic, rather than its central axis, leaving open the possibility for indigenous Greenlanders to speak on their own terms. This enables these graphic narratives to illuminate aspects of knowledge (including features of oral legend and supernatural encounters) that were previously discredited in colonial discourse. Furthermore, I show that attending to how embodied aspects of Greenlandic Inuit storytelling traditions can be captured in the graphic narrative medium may be an effective decolonial strategy, which could be employed by speculative fiction. I thus advocate methodologies for speculative fiction that strategically broaden its boundaries in order to address its intractable colonial legacy. Informed by approaches that focus attention on form - such as Marks's haptic visuality (2000) and visual theories of the power of hand-drawn comics (Groensteen 2010, Chute 2008) to engage the reader/viewer in both an embodied and reflective way - I assert that including graphic narratives which employ strategies of speculative fiction may present a unique opportunity for the genre to mount a powerful challenge to a colonial knowledge production.

Queer Decolonization and the Metaphor of the Androgynous God in Indonesia: A Cosmological Perspective on Local Culture

The narrative of colonialism in Indonesia gave birth to teachings that understand gender as a fixed and absolute attribute. The so-called "mythology of innate" gender is reduced to a binary dichotomy based on sex. A mythology that supports a system of heterosexism and has an impact on homophobic and transphobic attitudes. This legacy of colonialism also gave birth to the metaphor of God depicted as heterosexual-masculine, which established a patriarchal system both in church and society. This article explores queer theology concerning local culture in Indonesia. My argument is that through Ardhanarisvara cosmology, Watersnake, and Rangkong Dayak cosmology, Manang (Balinese) and Kodi (Sumba) Cosmology, this queer decolonization narrative contributes to contextual queer theology, especially about androgynous metaphors of God. God's metaphor has an ambiguous and transgressive character, beyond gender non-normative thinking.

The role of family dialogue in becoming response-able: a common worlds approach

ABSTRACT In this Viewpoints paper, I consider the role of family dialogue in shaping political agency and morality in relation to climate change and ecological destruction, drawing on insights from Common Worlds pedagogy. Common Worlds educators and researchers invite adults to attend to the questions children ask about the world as openings for unsettling dominant narratives of extractive settler colonialism. Moving this approach out of the classroom towards other intergenerational encounters, I suggest that interactions between children and parents can offer fleeting encounters for becoming response-able in multispecies worlds. Considering childing as a process of becoming, Common Worlds scholars and educators adopt a process ontology within adult–child interactions, opening up the possibility of adults, too, ‘becoming’ in the space–time of educational encounters. Drawing on conversations with my 5-year-old, I consider how encounters with the children in our lives can offer possibilities for re-casting ethical and political questions of responsibility.

Is Naga Society Egalitarian and Democratic? The Gender Questions on Customary Law and Its Practices in Nagaland

Customary law and its practices in tribal culture usually reproduce gender bias on almost all fronts. Focusing on Khiamniungan, one of the Naga tribes, this article tries to illustrate the patriarchal aspect of social reality as it is manifested through customary practices, folklore, local sayings and local proverbs. Based on ethnographic research, the study argues that the institution of Morung is the epitome of customary practices and justifies patriarchy, especially in the political sphere. Also, Naga women have to bargain and negotiate on all fronts: property rights, decisions in marriage and divorce, public participation and so on. As a result, such dominance silences the Naga women’s experiential history. The attempt is to critically reflect on the colonial narrative of Nagas as an egalitarian and democratic society and further highlight that the colonial paradigm continues to be reproduced in postcolonial times without an empirical and critical reflection.

Gender Features of Art Practice of Ukraine and the East in Modern Context

The purpose of this study is to elucidate the contextual narrative of artistic expression of gender in the artistic practices of the East and Ukraine. The research methodology combines the analytical method of reviewing secondary sources. Moreover, the research is carried out in accordance with interdisciplinary knowledge principles, taking into account the intersection of gender psychology, art history, and cultural studies in addressing the specified issue. The methodological approach facilitated the synthesis and modelling of a shared artistic perspective on gender issues, unveiled within the trend of glocalisation for creative resistance in both Ukrainian and Eastern traditions. The scientific novelty of the study lies in its comparative approach, transcending monolithic and indigenous studies of artistic practice. The juxtaposition of Ukrainian and Eastern practices forms the basis for a synthetic description of gender as an artistic category within a cross-cultural context. In conclusion, significant contrasts in the aesthetics and techniques of the Ukrainian and broader Eastern artistic spaces are shaped by the tradition of forming a socio-cultural paradigm. Concurrently, these ethnic communities utilise common and similar approaches in contemporary artistic exploration of gender identity, memory, and critique. Despite significant divergence in creative methodologies, artists from both regions leverage traditional artistic elements and digital technologies to craft hybrid forms and narratives of masculinity and femininity that challenge societal norms and contribute to artistic resistance. It is noteworthy that gender appears within the cultures of the East (specifically within the Ukrainian context) as a variant of dialogue regarding the colonial narrative. The similarity in opposition to patriarchal and socialist ideologies indicates a broader ethical vector within the aesthetic system. The presented results contribute to the re-evaluation of global artistic narratives. The ongoing assimilation of artistic ideas in the context of globalisation dynamics is transforming contemporary art practices, promoting the development of glocalisation as a form of resistance, not only within the confines of artistic work, but also in its projections onto socio-psychological reality. The article emphasises emergence, revealed in the close interplay of numerous factors shaping the artistic practice of individual communities in the global world.
 Keywords: art practice, gender discourse, artistic resistance, glocalisation.

Truth-telling, Ancestral Remains and the Establishment of a National Resting Place in Australia

ABSTRACT∞ This article explores the potential for truth-telling and healing created by the recently announced National Resting Place for Indigenous Ancestral Remains in Australia. The return of Indigenous Ancestral Remains provides the opportunity to make redress for past wrongs, and to reflect on the attitudes which informed the dehumanizing practices of their past collection and display. Indigenous Ancestral Remains are critical to truth-telling in Australia as by their very existence and materiality they disrupt colonial narratives about terra nullius. However, human remains are also a powerful reminder of the limits of human rights processes. We consider the potential of the National Resting Place as a new Australian site of truth and memory to disrupt the traditional ‘museum’ model and to restore the dignity and respect owing to previously objectified human remains.

Colonial constructions: Systemic racism in child welfare practice

Summary Drawing on historical constructions of Indigenous peoples, this paper analyses the continued impact of settler discourses of Indigenous families, parenting, and children on child welfare policy in Canada today. Findings In this work, two provincial children's Advocate reports on the deaths of Indigenous children in care, Tina Fontaine and Alex Gervais, are critically assessed in order to explore the processes through which these colonial constructions operate to create adverse outcomes for Indigenous people. Through this analysis, a number of contemporary colonial narratives are made visible, including the belief that Indigenous parents are inherently incapable of caring for their children, and the gendered construction of Indigenous men and boys as criminal and deviant and Indigenous girls as sexually exploitable. Application These findings suggest that greater critical reflection is needed when working with Indigenous peoples, including greater awareness of the ongoing impact of settler colonialism and the necessity of engaging in anti-colonial work.

Enacting the pluriverse in the West: contemplative activism as a challenge to the disenchanted one-world world

Within IR, scholars are starting to consider difference on the level of ontology rather than epistemology. Other worlds are introduced into IR’s political pluriverse, however, these are often encountered in faraway places, thereby playing into the colonial narrative that ontological difference does not exist in the ‘West’. This paper introduces another real from within the ‘disenchanted North’ that is shaped by contemplative activists: people using contemplation as a form of protest. An engagement with contemplative activism challenges our commonly held assumptions about what contemplation and social change are, thereby undermining the institutions of ‘science’ and ‘religion’ underlying the universe. It argues that the project of political ontology in IR should consist of two moves: drawing in other, in particular spiritual, realities into the political imaginations of IR and challenging the ontological assumptions underpinning concepts. Consequently, it suggests that the pluriverse in IR should be a methodological rather than an ontological commitment.

The Artist-Collector: Eugene von Guérard and the Berlin Ethnological Museum

The nineteenth-century landscape painter Eugene von Guérard was an avid collector. A series of letters held by the Ethnological Museum Berlin, translated by the authors from ‘old’ German into English, describes his personal collection of Australian Aboriginal cultural objects and its transfer, along with 64 objects acquired on consignment, to the Ethnological Department of the Berlin Museum in 1879. Complemented by the publication of the complete correspondence in a companion paper, this article contextualises the letters within von Guérard's careers as artist, curator and collector, positioning them within the framework of his travels as recorded in his sketchbooks, and in relation to specific consequential experiences and individuals, prevailing colonial narratives and European and colonial collecting agendas and networks. The letters inform, and are informed by, von Guérard’s art, collecting and professional practices, with new insights captured in the intersections between them.

Disrupting the carceral narrative of gender-based and sexual violence

This discussion seeks to critically explore the white, colonial narrative of gender-based and sexual violence that has justified and facilitated increased carceral power in responding to the social issue. In particular, I aim to emphasise the ways in which carcerality obscures the complex histories and dynamics of gender-based and sexual violence in order to individualise and privatise the problem. To demonstrate these dynamics, I will analyse: (1) the characterisation of perpetrators of gender-based and sexual violence as violent ‘Others’; (2) the centring of white women’s narratives in justifying increases to carceral power and implementing criminalising policies; (3) the extension of the carceral gaze through social work service provision; and (4) the fallacies of postfeminism facilitated by carceral logics. This discussion will conclude with exploring the possibilities of abolitionist social work and anti-carceral feminism in challenging the white narrative and creating space for partial histories to emerge.

The Perils of Colonial and Marxist Narratives in an Unconquered Lands: Ethnic-Based Killings and Evictions of the Amhara in Ethiopia

The present study explains the occurrence of violent killings and forced displacement of ethnically targeted groups, the Amhara in this case, through the direct influence of colonial narratives employed by fascist Italian colonizers and the indirect influence of radical Marxist political forces embracing Eurocentric education in their grasp of the Ethiopian local and indigenous situation. The study poses two major questions: What is the historical root behind the genesis of the hegemonic anti-Amhara discourse in Ethiopian politics? What are the consequences of this discourse? The study found out that Italy’s invented discourse of Amhara domination, unsubjected to critical mediation by Ethiopia’s political forces, has introduced a re-politicization of ethnicity to the politico-intellectual makeup of the country, which resulted, inter alia, in ongoing societal (in)securities of the Amhara population. In what seems to overcome these insecurity situations and fill the political representation void, the Amhara “defensive ethnonationalism” has emerged since 2015.

Lavaka (erosional gullies) provide productive patch environments for flora and farming in Madagascar's grassy highlands

Societal Impact StatementLavaka, large gullies in Madagascar, can cause problems for farmers and for infrastructure, but these features also have beneficial aspects that have generally been overlooked. They provide plant refugia, and commonly host species that would otherwise not thrive on the grassy uplands. Farmers sometimes make use of lavaka to plant crops that require more protection or soil moisture. Colonial narratives blame lavaka erosion on poor land management but ignore their pre‐human‐settlement existence on the landscape and the ecological functions they serve. The knowledge and wisdom of Malagasy farmers are key to better understanding the complex roles that lavaka plays in the landscape.SummaryThis paper combines a review of lavaka—erosional gullies in Madagascar's grass‐covered highlands—with new observations of their importance as ecological patch environments for a wide range of plants not seen elsewhere within the grassy biome. Lavaka play a role as a natural refugia for flora that would otherwise not thrive on the exposed and infertile hillslopes, and local farmers exploit their topography and sediment deposits to grow a variety of crops. We provide a classification scheme for lavaka based on the extent to which they have been colonised by vegetation. Our analysis is based on observations made over many field seasons in the highlands as well as interviews with Malagasy farmers living with lavaka on their land. We emphasise the importance of local knowledge and environmental wisdom in the analysis of landscape evolution, and we conclude that lavaka, while certainly an erosional problem in many places, can nonetheless provide valuable ecosystem services and agricultural opportunities that should not be overlooked.

Newgate Novels, Confessions of a Thug and the Narrative of Oriental Criminality

In this paper, the author compares the novel Confessions of a Thug (1839), written by a colonial official named Philip Meadows Taylor, with Newgate novels in general and the novel Jack Sheppard (1839) by William Harrison Ainsworth in particular. During the first half of the nineteenth century, two English colonial administrators named Philip Meadows Taylor and Colonel William Henry Sleeman published two works named Confessions of a Thug (1839) and Ramaseeana (1836). These two works popularised the notion that a religiously motivated murderous cult named 'thugs' operated on the roads of India, and they strangled and looted the unfortunate travelers. However, studies by Postcolonial scholars such as Kim A Wagner (2004), Aijaz Ahmed (1991), Maire Ni Fhlathuin (2001), and Amal Chatterjee (1998) questioned the veracity of the phenomenon of 'thuggee' and especially its supposed religious foundation. Ajay Dandekar (2014) notably considered thuggee and its religious associations to be a fictional creation of Sleeman and Taylor that led to the Inhuman Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. In this paper, the author analyzes the contradictions within the narrative of Confessions of a Thug and proves how the novel’s similarity with Newgate novels effectively negates the colonial narrative that portrays criminality and lawlessness as something unique to Asian and African nations. This paper also clarifies that the different critical receptions of Confessions of a Thug and Jack Sheppard, despite similar themes, effectively illustrate the argument of Edward Said that no knowledge is non-political.