Rehearsing Genealogies of Violence

Abstract

Abstract Frank Coates’s contemporary popular romance novel, Tears of the Maasai (2004) is an excellent terrain to explore the trials of violence sustained through the imposed cartography, disease, and cultural exoticization of the Maasai resulting from contacts between the African Savanna and nineteenth century British colonialism. Mary-Louise Pratt’s concept of ‘contact zones’ illuminates the abuses endemic to these asymmetrical British-Maasai encounters, exhibiting how colonial stereotypes continue to infuse contemporary literary representations of ‘Maasainess’. Using Rob Nixon’s concept of ‘slow violence’ I demonstrate the ways in which the damage first imposed through the Maasai-British colonial contacts gets sustained today, as is evident in the grammar through which ‘Maasainess’ continues to be narrated, contributing to the contemporary predicaments of the Maasai. Thus I argue that the continuation of slow violence is perpetuated and enhanced through today’s exoticization, cultural tourism and appropriation.