Assistant Professor of History,
Department of History,
Central Washington University,
E-mail : amutabim@cwu.edu or amutabi@yahoo.com
Abstract
In this paper, I will use the works and photographic representations of Elspeth Huxley (1907-1997) to demonstrate the biased nature of colonial photography in colonial Kenya. Elspeth Huxley is one the most influential writers of fiction and non-fiction on colonial Kenya. She wrote some influential historical books such as White Man's Country: Lord Delamere and the Making of Kenya, 1870-1914 . Throughout her work, Huxley undermined and dehumanized the African agency in colonial Kenya while privileging European agency. She was extravagant with historical facts and her stories and photographs are replete with pejorative and derogatory motifs. Huxley wrote some thirty books in many genres, mainly on colonial Kenya. Her fame as a writer comes from The Flame Trees of Thika , which became a best seller. The sequel to this book is The Mottled Lizard: Memories of an African Childhood , which is her autography about her growing up in colonial Kenya. Using historical methods, my paper will demonstrate that many European and colonial writings and photography on colonial Kenya tended to emphasize the wild nature of the environment in which the native people were positioned together with wild animals. ‘Wild' was therefore used to represent the persona of the natives and their surroundings. It was a power game, and a racist representation, because the ‘wild' was interpreted as helpless, requiring redemption and civilizing. In such discourses, natives were rendered inferior, undermined and dehumanized in order to be colonized. This was an “Othering,' ‘distancing' and dominating discourse of the colonial project that this paper will interrogate.