Crafting Sport History Behind Bars: Wrestling with State Patronage and Colonial Confinement in Kenya

Abstract

Abstract:This article explores how indigenous games such as wrestling were marginalized during the colonial era and the contemporary impact of this legacy. Through the sport of wrestling’s neotraditional resurgence, I argue that the sport’s contemporary iteration which emerged behind the imposing walls of Kenya’s penitentiaries provides an important window into historic discourse and state control of sport rooted in the colonial past. Paying close attention to the methodological challenges and opportunities researchers of indigenous sport face, the article also examines the sources available for scholars interested in investigating the social history of indigenous sport in Africa.

A National Struggle: Senegalese wrestling and Casamançais separatism

“…Matt Carotenuto makes the same argument for contemporary wrestling in Kenya. See Carotenuto, 2013Carotenuto, , 2016 Cadernos de Estudos Africanos • julho-dezembro de 2021 • 42, 81-102 separatists from the Casamance marched into town the next morning, following a group of women pouring cool water on the ground to symbolize their "peaceful" intentions (Marut, 2010, p. 100). 2 The separatists claimed to have revived a 1950s regional political party known as the Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de la Casamance (MFDC).…”