Colonial fathers wrote to children to manufacture rather than affirm intimacy across distance

Evidence

These are love letters designed to instill attachment, to capture the taste of her childhood in which he takes no part, to create rather than affirm a closeness for the little girl who will grow into a young woman while he is away. What he tells her he most fears is that she will recognize neither his aged, stout physique nor his voice when they meet years later on the dock in Marseille. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1476

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the colonial epistolary archive as a technology of intimacy-making — parallels other colonial correspondence studies where distance becomes productive of affect rather than merely an obstacle.