From impulsive adventure to From impulsive adventure to postcolonial commitment

Abstract

This article examines the making and maintaining of identity and migratory history among a group of 'old colonials', white people in contemporary postcolonial Kenya. In spite of the fact that white settler communities have recently been brought under scrutiny within anthropology of colonialism and that postcolomal writing has been torrential, the postcolonial realities of former settler communities have largely remained unexplored by anthropologists. To illuminate the processing of white colonial history as a dialogue between displacement and commitment, the focus of this article is on one particular narrative, this in order to bring forth the ambiguities of lived and localized realitiestemporally and spatially varied and contestedto discussions on postcolonial conditions in Africa.