Gender without Groups: Confession, Resistance and Selfhood in the Colonial Archive

Submitted by Sarah Emily Duff on 17 September, 2014 - 13:31

Publication Type:

Book Chapter

Authors:

Christopher J. Lee

Source:

Gender History Across Epistemologies, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, p.181–197 (2013)

ISBN:

9781118508206

URL:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118508206.ch7/summary

Keywords:

gendered categories, interracial relationship, national archives of malawi, social history, social transgression

Abstract:

This article offers a text/context analysis drawn from a document found in the {NationalArchives} of Malawi. The document is a confession by an anonymous European settler of the relationship he had with an African woman named Adaima. Decisively limited in certain respects, it nevertheless offers a detailed account of one womans agency. It also raises fundamental questions as to how typical this personal experience was and how individual histories should be positioned vis-a-vis group histories and their claims of categorical representation. This article consequently argues for the value and importance of individual lives against group conformities, concluding that historians should critically engage with the issue of groups and how they shape historical meaning.

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