The figure of the martyr in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s short fiction

In many ways, Ngũgĩ‘s collection Secret Lives and Other Stories (1975) foreshadows his latternovels and their thematic preoccupations as it portrays colonial encounters and social and political upheavals in (post)colonial Kenya. The paper focuses primarily on selected stories included in the second section of the collection which revolve around the theme of fighters and martyrs. Ngũgĩ‘s adoption of Christian imagery, on which he relies quite heavily in his novels as well, enables him to articulate the ambivalent position and conflicts of his characters, both African and European. The motif of martyrdom is associated both with the clashing worlds of Christianity and the Gikuyu religion (addressing primarily the subject of conversion), and the Mau Mau revolt which inevitably required communal sacrifices. The paper ponders on the various modifications of the motif and its potential functions.

Book review: Melissa Macauley, Distant Shores: Colonial Encounters on China’s Maritime Frontier

Melissa Macauley, Distant Shores: Colonial Encounters on China’s Maritime Frontier (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021), pp. 378, $39.95. ISBN: 9780691213484.

Global Religious History as a Rhizome: Colonial Panics and Political Islam in German East Africa

A Global History of Religion aims to trace connections, controversies, and contingencies in the emergence of “religion” as a global category. Its main intention is to de-center European epistemologies of religion by drawing out a more intricate global and plural genealogy. This is a very complex endeavour, however, especially when one leaves the realm of academic debate and considers the quotidian understandings of “religion” emerging in colonial encounters. Here one is often confronted by vast entanglements of practices, perceptions and politics, which need a historical methodology that foregrounds the plurality, complexity and historicity of all religious epistemes. Drawing on Deleuze’ and Guattari’s philosophical figure of the rhizome, this article sketches such an approach in a conversation between theory and historiographical practice, as it maps out a particular episode in the construction of “political Islam” in German East Africa.

Fear of a cannibal island: Colonial fear, everyday life, and event landscapes in the Erromango missions of Vanuatu

Archaeological landscapes of colonial encounter were shaped to varying degrees by mutual mistrust, misunderstanding, anxiety, and the inherent terror of frontier violence. In the mission encounters of Island Melanesia, the colonial trope of “cannibalism” added a particular tinge to these fears of the colonized other. Mythologies of cannibalism both repulsed and motivated Christian missionaries who were led to places such as Erromango in the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu). Cannibalism as a practice was rare or even non-existent in these encounters, but it remained part of the European imaginary of the region. Several highly-publicized missionary martyrdoms on Erromango between 1839–1872 remain important to local social memories enacted in place. At the same time, there is a backdrop of relatively peaceful everyday life for missionary families as revealed by the archaeological record of mission houses. The structural and actual violence perpetrated by Europeans in missions and other colonial encounters are historically and currently underemphasized.

Making Sense of Indigenous ⬄ Colonial Encounters: New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi in a Digital Age

This article explores how we interpret, write history, and make sense in a digital age. The study takes place at the intersection of three disciplines: Media and Communication Studies, Postcolonial Theory, and Law. This exploration is conducted in and through an examination of attempts to make sense of “official,” “legal” documents” that emerged out of indigenous ⬄ colonial encounters during the 19th century in New Zealand. Subsequently, this paper focuses on McKenzie’s seminal study of the New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi/Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and Jones and Hoskins’ study of The Second New Zealand Land Deed. These two studies are then interfaced with and considered in light of a recent governmental review of New Zealand’s ICT sector, infrastructure and markets. Here, the focus is on Regulating communications for the future: Review of the Telecommunications Act 2001, and the Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment Bill. This article finds that in a digital age—a world of deep fakes and total manipulability of mediated or recorded space—the hermeneut is required to enter and negotiate a (constrained) creative relationship: as an artisan, architect, or artist, with an interpretative context and/or medium.