The Private Lives of Empire: Emotion, Intimacy, and Colonial Rule

Jackson, Will

doi:10.1017/s0165115318000049

Cited by 7 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…Thus, the present research cannot claim to address whether the rhetorical strategies described were effective in priming certain structures of feeling. Indeed, past research on individualized accounts of emotion (e.g., through analysis of petition letters) has shown that the actual experience of emotion during these periods would have been much more pluralistic (Jackson, 2018). We also acknowledge that these interpretations are made from the vantage point of a temporally distant social and political context.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…To the first point, we seek to examine the conventions that Governors articulated to their audiences to cultivate emotional intimacy (as indicators of relationship) towards both the British Crown (vertical) and fellow subjects of Empire (horizontal). To the second point, we seek to examine how Governors cultivated fear, anxiety and hostility (Jackson, 2018) towards a racialized other during periods of conflict, to justify punitive acts against Māori who challenged the normative relationships built around colonial intimacy.…”

Section: Emotion and Empirementioning

confidence: 99%

“…(Gordon, 1882) Here, in discussing the Parihaka invasion, the Governor states that the Government's orders were intended to protect subjects rather than inflict any harm on those who are implied to not be included within the grouping of 'her Majesty's subjects'. Anxiety is invoked to justify the urgency of action as is common in racialized discourses of colonial affect (Jackson, 2018). By referring to "all classes" of subjects, Gordon frames the event in terms of collective concerns, while also implicitly reinforcing the social order that is under threat.…”

Section: Extractmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Performing identity entrepreneurship during the colonisation of New Zealand: A rhetorical construction of ‘loyal subjects of the Empire’

Choi

Liu

Belgrave

2022

J. Soc. Polit. Psych.

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A thematic analysis of New Zealand’s historical Speeches from the Throne (10 speeches, from 1860-1899) investigated rhetorical strategies used by Governors during colonisation, to mobilise both settler and indigenous people’s participation in the British Empire. Identity leadership (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001, https://doi.org/10.1111/0162-895X.00246), augmented by critical theories of emotion (Williams, 1977, Marxism and literature. Oxford University Press) under the cultural framework of hierarchical relationalism (Liu, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12058) was applied to show how unequal but reciprocal relationships were invoked by Governors, as representatives of the Crown and advocates for the general public in New Zealand. Governors attempted to mediate a positive shared identity within the British Empire; but at the same time to isolate those who excluded from subjecthood by their hostility to the Crown. Governors alternated between efforts to mobilise people against indigenous Māori who challenged them, and offers to include Māori who conformed to the conventions required of a hierarchical relationship between Crown and subject. We reflect on how these dynamics of rhetorical performance may still be relevant today, especially in contexts of hierarchy and in the domain of leader-follower relations more broadly.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 82%

Section: Emotion and Empirementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Extractmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Performing identity entrepreneurship during the colonisation of New Zealand: A rhetorical construction of ‘loyal subjects of the Empire’

Choi

Liu

Belgrave

2022

J. Soc. Polit. Psych.

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“…While this wasn't necessarily deliberate, it was perhaps unavoidable, for, as Will Jackson notes, "the 'private' remains a feminized domain," and trying to access such private spaces "involves engaging with an archive that constructs the intimate in part precisely through the confining of female subjectivities to the private sphere." 19 That I found the accounts of female interviewees to have greater relevance for my focus on domestic spaces also reflects the fact that, as Barbara Bush notes, white women acted as the "guardians of moral and physical health and hygiene in the expatriate home." 20 As such, this article takes inspiration from work by Karen Tranberg Hansen, as well as Vron Ware and Charlotte MacDonald, who emphasise the contradictory position of white women in the colonies as members of the "inferior" sex and the "superior" race.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“Internal Frontiers”: Whiteness, Intimacy, and the Expatriate Home in Britain's African Colonies during the Postwar Period

Cooper

2023

Itinerario

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Using archival oral history interviews with ex-colonial officers from the Scottish Decolonisation Project and the British Empire and Commonwealth Collection, this article examines the intimate lives and domestic spaces of white expatriates in Britain's African colonies during the postwar period, often described as the “people's empire.” In doing so, it seeks to better understand the socio-historical construction of imperial whiteness. It argues that the boundaries of the expatriate home acted as the “internal frontiers” of whiteness, insofar as racial difference was constructed through habitual bodily and domestic discipline concerning cleanliness, child-rearing, social interactions, and sex, which was monitored and enforced within expatriate social circles. Oral testimonies from white expatriates who lived and worked in colonial Africa highlight the contradictory nature of the discursive construction of whiteness, as both culturally distant from the African peoples over which it claimed racial superiority and dependent on operations of care and nurture provided by indigenous Africans. This article explores the ways in which Africans forged relationships with white expatriates as servants, lovers, and friends in order to examine how these ambivalent intimacies coexisted with, and were constitutive of, unequal racial hierarchies.

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“…Hence, our conceptualization largely follows that ofKlaas van Walraven and Jon Abbink (2003: 17).5 For an overview of the myriad forms and concepts of violence, see Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois (2004: 1-31).6 Both empirical research and theoretical literature on intimacy often draw on work on the history of emotions, asThrift (2004) andJackson (2018) exemplify. William Reddy's The Navigation of Feeling (2001) is among the publications most commonly used by scholars of intimacy.7 Thus, we approach the notion of 'nearness' according to Heideggerthat is, 'not something that can be measured by physical distance so much as the degree of involvement, engagement, concern, and attention one gives it', asStoler has summarized (2006: 15).8 Stoler reminds us that '[c]olonial intimacies engender "precarious affections": awkward familiarities, unsolicited attentions, uninvited caresses, probings that cannot be refused' (2006: 15).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%