Colonial officials displaced anxiety about empire onto bodily and comic self-descriptions
Evidence
Valck’s pre- mature fattening and balding were ostensibly “personal matters,” about which he incessantly wrote to his child. But how he wrote about them are not. In August 1873 he had been abruptly called back from Bali to deal with the eruption of what he calls a revolution in Eastern Java. He writes to her that the “rebels gave me so little to do that I have gained weight in the most incredible manner. I absolutely look like a bulldog,” an endear- ing self-portrait that conceals in its brushstrokes what has stressed his temperament and caused such strain. “The Resident of Banjuwangi to- tally lost his head… . He just went mad. The scenes that passed during the revolt were grotesque. The Europeans showed themselves to be as cowardly and irresponsible as it is possible to be. I am still so ashamed.” — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1325
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- XREF: Exemplifies the ‘minor key’ reading of personal letters and connects to the reader’s interest in affective registers of colonial archives.
Related
- A colonial official privately voiced shame at European cowardice during a Javanese revolt (similarity 0.85)
- Colonial officials caricature the colonized even as they depend on individuals among them (similarity 0.81)
- Colonial officials alternated between acute perception and scripted caricature of subjects (similarity 0.78)