Research Catalog

Title

Unsettled : denial and belonging among white Kenyans / Janet McIntosh.

Author

McIntosh, Janet, 1969-

Publication

• Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2016]
• ©2016

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 292 pages : map; 23 cm

Summary

"In 1963, Kenya gained independence from Britain, ending nearly seventy years of white colonial rule. While tens of thousands of whites relocated outside Kenya for what they hoped would be better prospects, many stayed. Over the past decade, however, protests, scandals, and upheavals have unsettled families with colonial origins, reminding them of the tenuousness of their Kenyan identity. In this book, Janet McIntosh looks at the lives and dilemmas of settler descendants living in postindependence Kenya. From clinging to a lost colonial identity to embracing a new Kenyan nationality, the public face of white Kenyans has undergone changes fraught with ambiguity. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews, McIntosh focuses on their discourses and narratives, asking: What stories do settler descendants tell about their claims to belong in Kenya? How do they situate themselves vis-a-vis the colonial past and anticolonial sentiment, phrasing and rephrasing their memories and judgments as they seek a position they feel is ethically acceptable? With her respondents straining to defend their entitlements in the face of mounting Kenyan rhetorics of ancestry and autochthony, McIntosh explores their contradictory and diverse responses: moral double consciousness, aspirations to uplift the nation, ideological blind spots, denial, and self-doubt. Ranging from land rights to language, from romantic intimacy to the African occult, Unsettled offers a unique perspective on whiteness in a postcolonial context and a groundbreaking theory of elite subjectivity" --

Series Statement

Ethnographic studies in subjectivity ; 10

Uniform Title

Ethnographic studies in subjectivity ; 10.

Subject

• Since 1963
• White people > Kenya > History
• Social conditions
• Whites
• Kenya > History > 1963-
• Kenya > Social conditions > 1963-
• Kenya

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-281) and index.

Contents

1. Unsettled -- 2. Loving the land -- 3. Guilt -- 4. Conflicted intimacies -- 5. Linguistic atonement -- 6. The occult -- Conclusion.

Call Number

Sc E 16-1513

ISBN

• 9780520290495
• 0520290496
• 9780520290518
• 0520290518

LCCN

2015043971

OCLC

922913387

Author

McIntosh, Janet, 1969- author.

Title

Unsettled : denial and belonging among white Kenyans / Janet McIntosh.

Publisher

Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2016]

Copyright Date

©2016

Type of Content

text

cartographic image

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Ethnographic studies in subjectivity ; 10

Ethnographic studies in subjectivity ; 10.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-281) and index.

Chronological Term

Since 1963

Research Call Number

Sc E 16-1513