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SUMMARY:Epistemology and the Dance Archive in Colonial Central Kenya - Dr 
 Cécile Feza Bushidi\, University of Cambridge
DTSTART:20171023T160000Z
DTEND:20171023T170000Z
UID:TALK93670@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Victoria Jones
DESCRIPTION:Scholars\, artists\, museum curators and sports celebrities ha
 ve been at work identifying the damaging epistemes deployed to portray dan
 ce and body cultures in Africa’s past. Dance within/from Africa has been
  integral to the construction of ‘theories of otherness’ which unfolde
 d within the framework of what V.Y Mudimbe calls the ‘authority of the t
 ruth’ (Mudimbe\, 1985). This talk begins with an overview of the bleedin
 g of such constrictive ontologies into colonial texts and iconographies of
  dance. By listening to the ‘pulse of the archive’(Stoler\, 2009) of c
 olonial central Kenya\, a settler project fraught with contested ideas abo
 ut what Africans’ dance cultures and dancers were thought to be\, I seek
  to recast our understanding of dance during colonialism in ways that expa
 nd the catalogue of preoccupations with dance within colonial Africa. I ex
 plore the nature of meaning and projection to justify certain beliefs and 
 establish criteria for action. I consider notions of space to observe the 
 fragility of colonial power in the face of local dances. I seek to re-eval
 uate localised somatic histories during this period. Such conversations be
 tween dance and colonialism contribute to the ‘affective turn’ in Afri
 can history.
LOCATION:Seminar Room S1 Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridge
  CB3 9DT
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