Format:
1 Online-Ressource
ISBN:
9781478027621
Content:
"In Primitive Normativity Elizabeth W. Williams traces the genealogy of a distinct narrative about African sexuality that British colonial authorities in Kenya used to justify their control over African populations. She identifies a discourse of "primitive normativity" that suggested that Kenyan Africans were too close to nature to develop the forms of sexual neuroses and practices such as hysteria, homosexuality, and prostitution that were supposedly common among Europeans. Primitive normativity framed Kenyan African sexuality as less sexually polluted than that of the more deviant populations who colonized them. Williams shows that colonial officials and settlers used this narrative to further the goals of white supremacy by arguing that Africans' sexuality was proof that Africans must be protected from the forces of urbanization, Western-style education, and political participation, lest they be exposed to forms of civilized sexual deviance. Challenging the more familiar notion that Europeans universally viewed Africans as hypersexualized, Williams demonstrates how narratives of African sexual normativity, rather than deviance, reinforced ideas about the evolutionary backwardness of African peoples and their inability to govern themselves"--
Additional Edition:
Erscheint auch als Druck-Ausgabe, Hardcover ISBN 9781478020714
Additional Edition:
Erscheint auch als Druck-Ausgabe, Paperback ISBN 9781478025498
Language:
English
Subjects:
Ethnology
DOI:
10.1215/9781478027621
URL:
Volltext
(URL des Erstveröffentlichers)
