Post by mamakayai on Mar 29, 2016 18:05:54 GMT 3
Will Jackson. Madness and Marginality: The Lives of Kenya's White
Insane. Studies in Imperialism Series. Manchester Manchester
University Press, 2013. 224 pp. $100.00 (cloth), ISBN
978-0-7190-8889-6; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-5261-0655-1.
Reviewed by Julie Parle (University of KwaZulu-Natal)
Published on H-Disability (March, 2016)
Commissioned by Iain C. Hutchison
Parle on Jackson
Madness and Marginality: The Lives of Kenya's White Insane brings
together important insights from diverse studies of empire and of
insanity. Will Jackson raises some challenging questions: How can we
see beneath the surface of imaginings of a mythical time and place,
even an era as close to us as the British settler-colony of Kenya
(1920-63)? What can such a perspective tell us about the nature of
imperialism and power in the twentieth century? How are race,
sexuality, gender, class, desire, fear, and even madness lived and
experienced? What are the consequences--material and mental--for
those who fail to inhabit fully the roles they feel obligated to
fulfill? And, influenced more by Frantz Fanon (1925-61) than Michel
Foucault (1926-84), can it be said that colonialism breeds
pathological states of mind?
The mythology of British Kenya is recounted in many memoirs and
popular imagery. For whites at least, the imagined colony was a
"Happy Valley" and a place of wide horizons and new beginnings. The
interwar era is especially remembered as a time of "alcohol, altitude
and adultery" (p. 121). Then came the fall: the repression of the
state of emergency and the terrors of the Mau Mau Uprising of 1952 to
1959, followed by independence in 1963, and, for most whites, a
return to Britain or onward emigration.
Against this, revisionist historians, including those of psychiatry
and empire, have, for some time now, highlighted the realities of the
violence of colonial dispossession and occupation, and the arrogance,
contemptuousness, and self-serving nature of the colonial era.
Through this lens, the still powerful scientific racism of the
mid-twentieth century, which pathologized all Africans--especially
those who participated in anticolonial nationalist uprisings--is
unsurprising and a vivid example of psychiatry as a form of "social
control from above" (pp. 13-14). Jackson's compassionate study,
however, is of the whites of Kenya whose lives have not, until now,
been reflected in either romanticized literature or critical
historiography: those who found (or lost) themselves experiencing
social marginality and mental illness.
Before the 1920s, eccentric, overindulging, or neurasthenic whites
were, most usually, repatriated "home" or to South Africa, sometimes
after spending a stint in jail, often for their own protection. But,
with the waves of more ethnically and socioeconomically diverse
immigrants, there emerged a strata of white Kenyan society not easily
assimilated into the elite. Their foibles, drunkenness,
indiscretions, and transgressions--especially sexual--across the
legal, social, and emotional boundaries of racial categories could
not easily be passed over.
From 1910, Mathari Mental Hospital in Nairobi provided a place of
custodial care for thousands of white men and women deemed to be
insane. Jackson gives us close, critical, and deeply sympathetic
analyses of more than 250 patient case files from 1940 to 1960. These
are retained at the Kenyan National archives, though there were many
more admissions whose records are apparently now lost. He argues that
these records give us a unique and important perspective of the less
than happy realities of colonial life. Chapter 3 discusses the
challenges of interpreting such documents, and is an excellent
illustration of methodological difficulties imaginatively embraced.
Simultaneously, Jackson is respectful of the settler memoirs and
memories, analyzing them for what they can offer to help illuminate
the expectations of empire.
During the "second colonial occupation," and especially after 1914,
most of the white population (which at its maximum in the late 1950s
numbered around sixty thousand) lived in towns, and were female,
single, working class, or unemployed. "Nine out of ten new arrivals
to Kenya in the inter-war years left. Failure was less exception than
the norm" (p. 57). Many became financially "embarrassed," and it was
feared that they would disgrace their race by becoming "Poor Whites."
After World War II, "the question of deviance emerge[d] as a
significant public concern" (p. 64).
It was not, Jackson argues, that mental illness among whites
necessarily increased in extent, but it was no longer possible to
deport or openly tolerate those who did not, or who could not,
conform. It was also the case that, just as the numbers of those who
were financially and socially marginal increased, tolerance or
acceptance of nonconformity decreased. Nor was this only a project of
the settler elite: those most at risk of losing their status as
members of a racially exclusive, colonially run society could be
deeply politically conservative and vilely racist in both conviction
and actions.
Indeed, the white Kenyan "colonial condition" (a term Jackson treats
with caution) was frequently characterized by "feelings of antipathy
towards Africa and Africans ranging from estrangement to alienation,
anxiety and fear" (p. 40). Even so, this was also a society that
required enormous (though hidden) effort to present a face to the
world that accepted--perhaps even embraced--the "indisputable
hardships" of colonial life, often including discomfort, disease, and
distances of time and space from loved ones. It was a projected,
racialized, and gendered persona. But, for many whites, it was a
brittle façade, the sustaining of which could be a great burden.
"The totemic European" is explored more fully in chapter 4, "Battered
Wives and Broken Homes: The Colonial Family" (p. 107). The reality of
colonial life often included violence, loneliness, marital strain,
and fear--fear of "betrayal" and murder by African servants, as well
as fear of letting down one's guard and failing to maintain the
strenuous performance of heterosexual whiteness, not only in public
but also in the intimate theater of the home.
The following chapter, "Stigma, Shame and Scandal: Sex and Mental
Illness," shows that sexual desire, particularly of white women for
black men, struck at the heart of colonial boundaries. Such "loose
women" could run the risk of being ostracized from "respectable white
society," even being committed to Mathari as irredeemable
"psychopaths" (p. 131). There were also "other men," and the Mathari
files give us testimony to transvestism, alcoholism, suicide, and
same-sex relationships between European and African men. There is,
however, little or no evidence that white men were admitted as mental
patients due to homosexuality, and it is not possible to discern
clear patterns in diagnosis or treatment.
In the final chapter, "States of Emergency: Psychosis and
Transgression," Jackson skillfully explores the content of whites'
"delusions." These typically identified "Natives" and "danger." As
with poverty, it was not so much the reality of fear that was
regarded as abnormal; rather, it was not managing one's fear that was
seen to "let the side down." Other fears and terrors encompassed
shame, sexual violence, betrayal within the home, and witchcraft.
There was also the psychological damage of counterinsurgency training
and operations. Jackson raises the intriguing possibility that "the
voices" of the white insane constituted a form of protest against, or
challenge to, colonial rule. He argues that in the context of the
late colonial period, they were a cacophonous refracted, though
fractured, truth.
Jackson's view that the histories he has brought to our attention in
this book are "valuable in their challenge to the ideologically
freighted archetype of 'the European'" is, I think, convincing (p.
177). He successfully shows how for "those individuals _within_
empire who found themselves recipient of psychiatric care ... empire
was as tedious as it was traumatic, both brutalising and banal" (p.
13). Moreover, he notes that "colonial rule ... entailed, for whites
as well as blacks, stress, jeopardy, doubt and alienation" (p. 178).
While there are some who might feel that sympathy for white settler
suffering is misguided or misplaced, Jackson's most important
insight, perhaps, is that the absence of these fuller accounts of the
past has also meant a missed opportunity to critique the costs and
wounds of imperialism, past and present.
Citation: Julie Parle. Review of Jackson, Will, _Madness and
Marginality: The Lives of Kenya's White Insane_. H-Disability, H-Net
Reviews. March, 2016.
URL: www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=44810
Insane. Studies in Imperialism Series. Manchester Manchester
University Press, 2013. 224 pp. $100.00 (cloth), ISBN
978-0-7190-8889-6; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-5261-0655-1.
Reviewed by Julie Parle (University of KwaZulu-Natal)
Published on H-Disability (March, 2016)
Commissioned by Iain C. Hutchison
Parle on Jackson
Madness and Marginality: The Lives of Kenya's White Insane brings
together important insights from diverse studies of empire and of
insanity. Will Jackson raises some challenging questions: How can we
see beneath the surface of imaginings of a mythical time and place,
even an era as close to us as the British settler-colony of Kenya
(1920-63)? What can such a perspective tell us about the nature of
imperialism and power in the twentieth century? How are race,
sexuality, gender, class, desire, fear, and even madness lived and
experienced? What are the consequences--material and mental--for
those who fail to inhabit fully the roles they feel obligated to
fulfill? And, influenced more by Frantz Fanon (1925-61) than Michel
Foucault (1926-84), can it be said that colonialism breeds
pathological states of mind?
The mythology of British Kenya is recounted in many memoirs and
popular imagery. For whites at least, the imagined colony was a
"Happy Valley" and a place of wide horizons and new beginnings. The
interwar era is especially remembered as a time of "alcohol, altitude
and adultery" (p. 121). Then came the fall: the repression of the
state of emergency and the terrors of the Mau Mau Uprising of 1952 to
1959, followed by independence in 1963, and, for most whites, a
return to Britain or onward emigration.
Against this, revisionist historians, including those of psychiatry
and empire, have, for some time now, highlighted the realities of the
violence of colonial dispossession and occupation, and the arrogance,
contemptuousness, and self-serving nature of the colonial era.
Through this lens, the still powerful scientific racism of the
mid-twentieth century, which pathologized all Africans--especially
those who participated in anticolonial nationalist uprisings--is
unsurprising and a vivid example of psychiatry as a form of "social
control from above" (pp. 13-14). Jackson's compassionate study,
however, is of the whites of Kenya whose lives have not, until now,
been reflected in either romanticized literature or critical
historiography: those who found (or lost) themselves experiencing
social marginality and mental illness.
Before the 1920s, eccentric, overindulging, or neurasthenic whites
were, most usually, repatriated "home" or to South Africa, sometimes
after spending a stint in jail, often for their own protection. But,
with the waves of more ethnically and socioeconomically diverse
immigrants, there emerged a strata of white Kenyan society not easily
assimilated into the elite. Their foibles, drunkenness,
indiscretions, and transgressions--especially sexual--across the
legal, social, and emotional boundaries of racial categories could
not easily be passed over.
From 1910, Mathari Mental Hospital in Nairobi provided a place of
custodial care for thousands of white men and women deemed to be
insane. Jackson gives us close, critical, and deeply sympathetic
analyses of more than 250 patient case files from 1940 to 1960. These
are retained at the Kenyan National archives, though there were many
more admissions whose records are apparently now lost. He argues that
these records give us a unique and important perspective of the less
than happy realities of colonial life. Chapter 3 discusses the
challenges of interpreting such documents, and is an excellent
illustration of methodological difficulties imaginatively embraced.
Simultaneously, Jackson is respectful of the settler memoirs and
memories, analyzing them for what they can offer to help illuminate
the expectations of empire.
During the "second colonial occupation," and especially after 1914,
most of the white population (which at its maximum in the late 1950s
numbered around sixty thousand) lived in towns, and were female,
single, working class, or unemployed. "Nine out of ten new arrivals
to Kenya in the inter-war years left. Failure was less exception than
the norm" (p. 57). Many became financially "embarrassed," and it was
feared that they would disgrace their race by becoming "Poor Whites."
After World War II, "the question of deviance emerge[d] as a
significant public concern" (p. 64).
It was not, Jackson argues, that mental illness among whites
necessarily increased in extent, but it was no longer possible to
deport or openly tolerate those who did not, or who could not,
conform. It was also the case that, just as the numbers of those who
were financially and socially marginal increased, tolerance or
acceptance of nonconformity decreased. Nor was this only a project of
the settler elite: those most at risk of losing their status as
members of a racially exclusive, colonially run society could be
deeply politically conservative and vilely racist in both conviction
and actions.
Indeed, the white Kenyan "colonial condition" (a term Jackson treats
with caution) was frequently characterized by "feelings of antipathy
towards Africa and Africans ranging from estrangement to alienation,
anxiety and fear" (p. 40). Even so, this was also a society that
required enormous (though hidden) effort to present a face to the
world that accepted--perhaps even embraced--the "indisputable
hardships" of colonial life, often including discomfort, disease, and
distances of time and space from loved ones. It was a projected,
racialized, and gendered persona. But, for many whites, it was a
brittle façade, the sustaining of which could be a great burden.
"The totemic European" is explored more fully in chapter 4, "Battered
Wives and Broken Homes: The Colonial Family" (p. 107). The reality of
colonial life often included violence, loneliness, marital strain,
and fear--fear of "betrayal" and murder by African servants, as well
as fear of letting down one's guard and failing to maintain the
strenuous performance of heterosexual whiteness, not only in public
but also in the intimate theater of the home.
The following chapter, "Stigma, Shame and Scandal: Sex and Mental
Illness," shows that sexual desire, particularly of white women for
black men, struck at the heart of colonial boundaries. Such "loose
women" could run the risk of being ostracized from "respectable white
society," even being committed to Mathari as irredeemable
"psychopaths" (p. 131). There were also "other men," and the Mathari
files give us testimony to transvestism, alcoholism, suicide, and
same-sex relationships between European and African men. There is,
however, little or no evidence that white men were admitted as mental
patients due to homosexuality, and it is not possible to discern
clear patterns in diagnosis or treatment.
In the final chapter, "States of Emergency: Psychosis and
Transgression," Jackson skillfully explores the content of whites'
"delusions." These typically identified "Natives" and "danger." As
with poverty, it was not so much the reality of fear that was
regarded as abnormal; rather, it was not managing one's fear that was
seen to "let the side down." Other fears and terrors encompassed
shame, sexual violence, betrayal within the home, and witchcraft.
There was also the psychological damage of counterinsurgency training
and operations. Jackson raises the intriguing possibility that "the
voices" of the white insane constituted a form of protest against, or
challenge to, colonial rule. He argues that in the context of the
late colonial period, they were a cacophonous refracted, though
fractured, truth.
Jackson's view that the histories he has brought to our attention in
this book are "valuable in their challenge to the ideologically
freighted archetype of 'the European'" is, I think, convincing (p.
177). He successfully shows how for "those individuals _within_
empire who found themselves recipient of psychiatric care ... empire
was as tedious as it was traumatic, both brutalising and banal" (p.
13). Moreover, he notes that "colonial rule ... entailed, for whites
as well as blacks, stress, jeopardy, doubt and alienation" (p. 178).
While there are some who might feel that sympathy for white settler
suffering is misguided or misplaced, Jackson's most important
insight, perhaps, is that the absence of these fuller accounts of the
past has also meant a missed opportunity to critique the costs and
wounds of imperialism, past and present.
Citation: Julie Parle. Review of Jackson, Will, _Madness and
Marginality: The Lives of Kenya's White Insane_. H-Disability, H-Net
Reviews. March, 2016.
URL: www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=44810