Queering Colonial Natal
Indigeneity and the Violence of Belonging in Southern Africa
How were indigenous social practices deemed queer and aberrant by colonial forces?
Details
Queering Colonial Natal
Indigeneity and the Violence of Belonging in Southern Africa
ISBN: 9781517905170
Publication date: October 15th, 2019
240 Pages
8 x 5
"All in all, this is a wonderful and important book. It helps the audience understand and redefine contemporary heterosexual normativity beyond colonial Africa and links settler queering of indigenous Africans in Natal with Africa’s anti-gay rhetoric today (Tallie 2019, 188-189). Tallie’s depiction of the heteronormativity and global nature of settler colonization is truly valuable to anthropology, European Studies, and many other humanities and social science disciplines. Anyone who is interested in race in post-colonial societies or want to better understand today’s issue with race should read this book."—EuropeNow
"Queering Colonial Natal masterfully details the kinds of perpetual settler labor and vigilance required to respond to the indigenous African majority and the Indian migrant populations who were continually manipulating and shaping the settler order from the margins."—GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian & Gay Studies
"Tallie’s book contributes to an in-depth understanding of the machinations of settler control as well as the deep fears and desires of the settler state."—Gender & History
"Throughout the book, Tallie’s style is clear and elegant. When each chapter ended, I found myself wanting more of his commentary and analysis of the intricate race and gender dynamics that permeated nearly every part of life in Natal."—Ethnic Studies Review
"This book is genuinely invaluable to diverse fields such as history, African queer studies, anthropology, and many other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences."—Journal of African History
How were indigenous social practices deemed queer and aberrant by colonial forces?
In Queering Colonial Natal, T.J. Tallie travels to colonial Natalestablished by the British in 1843, today South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal provinceto show how settler regimes “queered” indigenous practices. Defining them as threats to the normative order they sought to impose, they did so by delimiting Zulu polygamy; restricting alcohol access, clothing, and even friendship; and assigning only Europeans to government schools.
Using queer and critical indigenous theory, this book critically assesses Natal (where settlers were to remain a minority) in the context of the global settler colonial project in the nineteenth century to yield a new and engaging synthesis. Tallie explores the settler colonial history of Natal’s white settlers and how they sought to establish laws and rules for both whites and Africans based on European mores of sexuality and gender. At the same time, colonial archives reveal that many African and Indian people challenged such civilizational claims.
Ultimately Tallie argues that the violent collisions between Africans, Indians, and Europeans in Natal shaped the conceptions of race and gender that bolstered each group’s claim to authority.
T.J. Tallie is assistant professor of history at the University of San Diego.