Colonized Yesterday, Colonized Today, Colonized Tomorrow

If decolonization is a story of freedom and emancipation, then it is only the story of a man’s freedom and emancipation. In fact, it often seen as a story of competing masculinities and patriarchies, where women exist as nothing but mere props. Their bodies are exploited as sites for both conquest and resistance, modernity and tradition, colonization and decolonization. In this enduring battle between Western and the Eastern masculinities, women occur as dispossessed, dislocated, and vulnerable instruments of struggle. They are rendered with objectivity, and no subjectivity; an example of which would be Jomo Kenyatta’s text pertaining to the initiation of boys and girls in Africa. Where Europe is fiercely committed as the harbinger of civilization, Kenyatta is fiercely determined as the protector of tradition and culture. In this conflict between Europe and Kenyatta, the person who is directly affected by the ritual  (i.e. the woman) is absent from the entire scene. In Kenyatta’s text we do not hear of a single female voice, we do not see any sense of agency rendered to women, we only see two competing men using a woman’s body to meet their ends. Inevitably, we are left with the question, “whither freedom?”

“A "gentlemen's agreement" was reached between the Government and the missionaries,” perhaps best encapsulates the theme of this blog. "'Gentlemen" on both sides were actively making decisions which involved great implications for women, but failed to take their views and considerations into account.The Europeans want to abolish the ‘barbarous’ practice of clitoridectomy of girls, while Kenyatta is extremely defensive about it. For Europeans, the abolishment of this custom would serve as a testament to their success as civilizers, while for Kenyatta, its endurance would act as a strong statement against colonizers and symbolize the retention of traditional integrity. However,what ties Europe and Kenyatta together is their objectification of women, in order to achieve their goals. Women therefore remain eternally colonized. 

 Kenyatta is monomaniacally obsessed in the pursuit of maintaining this custom. According to him, the abolition of clitoridectomy would mirror the abolition of an entire institution. This ritual constructs the identity of the Gikuyu, symbolizes their unity as a tribe and is endowed with great cosmological significance. It also enables them to record time and history, and memorialize certain events. In short, it seems as if Kenyatta’s entire world would collapse if this custom is to be abolished. However, we are left to imagine if this explanation is even plausible. No culture exists since time immemorial, no culture is stagnant, and no culture is permanent. In fact, cultures are open to improvisation and dynamism; however, his reaction lends this practice a certain degree of immobility and fossilization. This is problematic as it comes from grounds where women’s bodies act as shields for defense and sites of resistance against the colonizers. 

Kenyatta asserts that a majority of his Gikuyu men view the missionaries with deep mistrust and suspicion. They believe that the missionaries secretly aim to “disintegrate their social order and thereby hasten their Europeanisation.” This ultimately means that clitoridectomy is just a metaphor in this fight between Europeanisation and the Gikuyu social order, European men and Gikuyu men, colonization and decolonization. It is a fight where women’s bodies just serve as props. If the ‘gentleman’s solution’ is not reaching success, then Kenyatta needs to react strongly in defense of his customs. He reinforces this practice.   He endows it with a greater degree of importance, and his response makes it even more entrenched, which culminates in making the traditional more traditional.  This culture creates a new ontology, a new personhood, and by extension, a new culture. It is a new entry for patriarchy, namely post-colonial patriarchy.The woman remains tragic and trapped, even in the age of decolonization.  Her body was colonized yesterday, it is colonized today, and it will remain colonized tomorrow.