Duke University Press
Unreasonable Histories: Nativism, Multiracial Lives, and the Genealogical Imagination in British Africa
Regular price
$28.95 USD
Regular price
Sale price
$28.95 USD
Unit price
per
Shipping calculated at checkout.
Couldn't load pickup availability
Title: Unreasonable Histories: Nativism, Multiracial Lives, and the Genealogical Imagination in British Africa
Author: Christopher J Lee
ISBN: 9780822357254
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2014
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Number of Pages: 368
Publisher Description: In <i>Unreasonable Histories</i>, Christopher J. Lee unsettles the parameters and content of African studies as currently understood. At the book's core are the experiences of multiracial Africans in British Central Africa-contemporary Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Zambia-from the 1910s to the 1960s. Drawing on a spectrum of evidence-including organizational documents, court records, personal letters, commission reports, popular periodicals, photographs, and oral testimony-Lee traces the emergence of Anglo-African, Euro-African, and Eurafrican subjectivities which constituted a grassroots Afro-Britishness that defied colonial categories of native and non-native. Discriminated against and often impoverished, these subaltern communities crafted a genealogical imagination that reconfigured kinship and racial descent to make political claims and generate affective meaning. But these critical histories equally confront a postcolonial reason that has occluded these experiences, highlighting uneven imperial legacies that still remain. Based on research in five countries, <i>Unreasonable Histories</i> ultimately revisits foundational questions in the field, to argue for the continent's diverse heritage and to redefine the meanings of being African in the past and present-and for the future.
Author: Christopher J Lee
ISBN: 9780822357254
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2014
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Number of Pages: 368
Publisher Description: In <i>Unreasonable Histories</i>, Christopher J. Lee unsettles the parameters and content of African studies as currently understood. At the book's core are the experiences of multiracial Africans in British Central Africa-contemporary Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Zambia-from the 1910s to the 1960s. Drawing on a spectrum of evidence-including organizational documents, court records, personal letters, commission reports, popular periodicals, photographs, and oral testimony-Lee traces the emergence of Anglo-African, Euro-African, and Eurafrican subjectivities which constituted a grassroots Afro-Britishness that defied colonial categories of native and non-native. Discriminated against and often impoverished, these subaltern communities crafted a genealogical imagination that reconfigured kinship and racial descent to make political claims and generate affective meaning. But these critical histories equally confront a postcolonial reason that has occluded these experiences, highlighting uneven imperial legacies that still remain. Based on research in five countries, <i>Unreasonable Histories</i> ultimately revisits foundational questions in the field, to argue for the continent's diverse heritage and to redefine the meanings of being African in the past and present-and for the future.
