eBook

Historicizing Colonial Nostalgia

Lorcin, P

2011,2012

Overview

01 02 This illuminating study of European women's narratives in colonial Algeria and Kenya argues that nostalgia was not a post-colonial phenomenon but was embedded in the colonial period. Patricia M. E. Lorcin explores the distinction between imperial nostalgia, associated with the loss of power that results from the loss of empire, and colonial nostalgia, associated with loss of socio-cultural standing—in other words, loss of a certain way of life. This distinction helps to make women's discursive role an important factor in the creation of colonial nostalgia, due to their significant contribution to the establishment of a European colonial environment. 13 02 Patricia M. E. Lorcin is an associate professor of History at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice and Race in Colonial Algeria (1995), editor of Algeria and France 1800-2000: Identity, Memory, and Nostalgia (2006), and co-editor of several collections of essays including France and its Spaces of War: Experience, Memory, Image (2009). 02 02 Comparative study of the writings and strategies of European women in two colonies, French Algeria and British Kenya, during the twentieth century. Its central theme is women's discursive contribution to the construction of colonial nostalgia. 04 02 PART I: 1900-1930. COLONIAL WOMEN AND THEIR IMAGINED SELVES  Women and their Colonial Worlds  Nostalgia Personified: Isabelle Eberhardt and Karen Blixen  PART II: 1920-1940. POLITICAL REALITIES AND FICTIONAL REPRESENTATIONS  Reality Expressed; Reality Imagined: Colonial Women in Twenties Algeria and Kenya  Writing and Living the Exotic [The Twenties]  Women's Fictions of Colonial Realism [The Thirties] PART III: IMPERIAL DECLINE AND THE REFORMULATION OF NOSTALGIA  Nationalist Anger; Colonial Illusions: Women's responses to Decolonization Happy Families, Red Strangers and 'A Vanishing Africa': Nostalgia Comes Full Circle 31 02 Comparative study of the writings and strategies of European women in two colonies, French Algeria and British Kenya, during the twentieth century 19 02 1) COMPARATIVE APPROACH: There are few comparative studies in the literature on this subject, while there is a plethora of work on women writers within a single colony. 2) ANALYTICALLY RICH: Lorcin avoids reductive explanations, examines the intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, colonialism, and modernity. 3) NUANCED PORTRAIT: Lorcin provides a complex, not unsympathetic look at these writers, without ignoring the underlying racism or trauma of colonialism.

• Publisher: Springer Nature,Palgrave Macmillan,Palgrave Macmillan US
• Subject: African History / African Languages / African Literature / African literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism / African Literature,Language&Linguistics / British 20th Century / Colonies in literature / European 20th Century / European History / French History / Gender and Women's History / General history of Africa / History / History, Modern / Literary and Cultural Studies / Modern History / Nostalgia in literature / Palgrave History Collection / Social History / Women authors / Women colonists / Women colonists -- Algeria / Women colonists -- Kenya / World /Postcolonial Lit
• ISBN: 9781137013040, 1137013044, 0230338658, 9780230338654, 9781349341672, 1349341673