Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa

The Human and Nonhuman Creatures of Nigeria

Dr. Saheed Aderinto (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

340 Seiten

2022
Ohio University Press (Verlag)
978-0-8214-2476-6 (ISBN)

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From debates over the aesthetics of birds in the urban landscape to how horse racing enhanced imperial power to the ways in which water navigation impacted aquatic creatures, Saheed Aderinto argues that it is impossible to comprehend the full extent of imperial domination without considering the colonial subjecthood of animals.

With this multispecies study of animals as instrumentalities of the colonial state in Nigeria, Saheed Aderinto argues that animals, like humans, were colonial subjects in Africa.

Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa broadens the historiography of animal studies by putting a diverse array of species (dogs, horses, livestock, and wildlife) into a single analytical framework for understanding colonialism in Nigeria and Africa as a whole.

From his study of animals with unequal political, economic, social, and intellectual capabilities, Aderinto establishes that the core dichotomies of human colonial subjecthood—indispensable yet disposable, good and bad, violent but peaceful, saintly and lawless—were also embedded in the identities of Nigeria’s animal inhabitants. If class, religion, ethnicity, location, and attitude toward imperialism determined the pattern of relations between human Nigerians and the colonial government, then species, habitat, material value, threat, and biological and psychological characteristics (among other traits) shaped imperial perspectives on animal Nigerians.

Conceptually sophisticated and intellectually engaging, Aderinto’s thesis challenges readers to rethink what constitutes history and to recognize that human agency and narrative are not the only makers of the past.

Saheed Aderinto is a professor of history and African and African diaspora studies at Florida International University. He is the author of Guns and Society in Colonial Nigeria: Firearms, Culture, and Public Order and When Sex Threatened the State: Illicit Sexuality, Nationalism, and Politics in Colonial Nigeria, 1900–1958.

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

PART 1: LOYAL COMPANIONS, TASTY FOOD, DISTINGUISHED ATHLETES, POLITICAL BEINGS

1. A Meaty Colony: Nigerians and the Animals They Ate

2. The Living Machines of Imperialism: Animal Aesthetics, Imperial Spectacle, and the Political Economy of the Horse and Donkey

3. “Dogs Are the Most Useful Animals”: A Canine History of Colonial Nigeria

4. The Nigerian Political Zoo: Animal Art, Modernism, and the Visual Narrative of Nation Building

PART 2: PATHOLOGY, EMPATHY, ANXIETY

5. “Beware of Dogs”: Rabies and the Elastic Geographies of Fear

6. The Lion King in the Cage: Nature, Wildlife Conservation, and the Modern Zoo

7. “Let Us Be Kind to Our Dumb Friends”: Animal Cruelty in the Discourse of Colonial Modernity'

8. “A Great Evil Ritual Murder”: The Save-the-Nigerian-Horse-and-Donkey Campaign

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	05.05.2022
Reihe/Serie	New African Histories
Verlagsort	Athens
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Natur / Technik ► Natur / Ökologie
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Wirtschaftsgeschichte
ISBN-10	0-8214-2476-9 / 0821424769
ISBN-13	978-0-8214-2476-6 / 9780821424766
Zustand	Neuware