Shane Moran - Alternation Journal

agency of white settlers, trekkers, ad~ninistrators, politicians and intellectuals and tlle
racialised encountel-s of agency.
It is no criticism to say that what the book also highlights are the relative
silences of nineteenth centuly accounts of subaltern and 'indigenous' agency ill the
coi~struction of colonial society. In this sense, while Keegan's book suggests and
explores the competing age~~ilas for using power and the competing strategies forgaining
and maintaining control of the colonial racial order as well as the differing
ways in which a range of settler subjects beca~ne 'agents of empire', the rclated absence
of engagement with those identified as 'the colonised' is proble~natic. Keletso Atkins'
(1993) work on colonial Natal, for example, argues that a disti~lctly African work
clrlture ii~tlrrenced and constrained the apparently dominant work cultur-e ofdeveloping
capitalism at this time. This made for a colonial encounter that was always contested,
moving and cliangeable, and not only for the colonised but also the colonisers.
Fiainilton's (1993:78) work on Shaka also points to tlie 'historically conditioned
dialectic of iutertextuality between "western" models of historical discourse and
indigenous traditions of narrative'. As Greenstein (1995:226) lias argued firthel; for
Hamilton this Ineans, anzongst a range ofat-guinents that 'colonialism' is not a separate
entity that simply acts upon indigenous societies and forms colonial subjects, but that it
is ratlier itself implicated in and inspired by indigenous voices, and vice versa. Equally
she argues that the 'subaltern' and the 'rulers' are formed by various enLr g e~nents that
interact, constrain and modify each other, and cannot be seen as either autonomous
agents or subjects sirnply defined ‘from above' or 'from below'.
There is a further problem that the synthesis around structure apparent in
Keegan's Colonial Order highlights, when read in conjunction with works like that of
Helen Bradford's 'Women, Gender and Colonialism'; the problem of genderblindedness
or 'androcentrism'. It is not good enough to argue that a
discussiorl of 'I"a1niiy' and of 'women', hut there is ve~y little or1 niasculinilies, on
xualities and 011 gender ti~;ii moves beyond the descriptive, or the silence ofmeinol-y
he acceptance of particular Ibmls of agency as representative of 'how it was' for
en. Hofineyr's work is vely dit'ferent. The important focus on gendered aspects of
e, storytelling and intellectual traditions are just part of a much wider frame of
agemelit with the agencies of gender in her work. In the process agency becomes
ly more problematic, part of the necessary trouble of place and the politics of
ity. However, as Bradford and others (e.g. Bozzoli; Mager; Van Der Spuy; Marks;
an~con~) have argued, and despite significant historiographical interventions that
ave demonstrated the importance of these agencies and structures of gender relations,
outh African social histo~y remains markedly androceritric in many respects.
e retreat to examining 'whiteness9
ptured under a broad sense of retreat, a growing number of white historians have in
e 1990s increasingly focused on the theme of 'whiteness'. This has a number of
dimensions. 111 the first place, it was a theine to which early I-evisionism drew attention:
While society has its own history ofriiilitai-y conqtlest and class struggle. ancl
essentiai to the class pso.ject of leading whitc classes--farniers. mine o\vner.s
and industrialisls-has hccn tlie cstablishmcnt of a consensus whicli
ovcrconics thcsc. lheir common wlliteness and pre.judice agaiiist blacks.
tlloilgh it lias clear Iiistorical and objective roots. is also an ideological ancl
cultural form wl~ich has had to bc forged and fouglit for (Bozzoli 1983: 19).
general Ilistoly would pay at least as much attention to the ruled as to the
Equally, it represents a defensive response to Inore recent developments. One aspect,
rulers. to women as to men. This book is preoccupied with structuring forces.
retlected in critiques by a range ofblack intellectuals and academics, has related to the
with the forces of imperialism and colonialism. and less so with the pcopIes
\vllo experienced their effects. Thus it gives greater attention to the po\vel.fill
than tile powerless, the colonizers than the colonized, to illen than to wol~~en,
It might seem to solnc that the perspectives and worldviews of dolninant
actors are given privileged status over the experiences and perspectives oftile
victims and the powerless. J offer no excuses, as the investigation of
structuring forces is of profound sigrlificance (Bradford 1996:viii).
question of who speaks for whom and that 'Africans need to be able to speak for
themselves'". Tlze failme to reflect 011 and rethink the i~nplications of the practice of
history by predotnit~antly ivhite historians and the associated ways inany inherently
reproduce andlor are accused of reproducing the power relations in the larger society in
their practices and neth hods of research 'frorn below' has facilitated this retreat. It
seetns safer to have white sut?jects as objccts of study, tl~en to negotiate tile varying
forms ofpower ar~d Itnosvledge production that are cur-sently so visibly racialised.
Bradford has delnonstrated just how different rule, power and structure lnigllt be
anal~sed when the agencies and relations of gender are taken necessarily seriously,
Others, heed with the politics of reconciliation and a perceived decline in
radicalism in the period of transition have interpreted ideas of 'forgetting, the past'" to
A similar set of Cl-iticislns apply to Val1 Onselen's biograpl~y, despite Teny rnean a shift a\vay frorn explicitly political history and the necessary audiences this
Ranger's (1 997:384) praise of it as a 'landmark in African gender studies"'. Yes, there elltailed. Pit differently, tlze 1980s politics of histoly, of the mission of popularisation,
ii . This is based or1 LI very pasticulari-cadingofgender-at Icast li.om his cLlrsory comments in a I' l'his LVas a tllemc w[lic[l silrfxcd at the Natal gender coiifcrencc in 1991. See also i,cl-okc
hricf review Not only docs it appear to cclilaie gcndcl- ivilll .ivon~c~i'. hut also to eclllatc
succcssfiil gcndcr st~~dies wit11 tile presence of 'women' as 'ricll and ~.ounded categories' and as
hislo~.icni agcnts ill illis sense.
( 1994).
" N. Mandcla (in ildctj~i0z~y~ ~11Lcrvie~v 1995).