Colonial self-writing entangled the gaze upon self, superiors, and colonized alike

Evidence

In each of them he is watching himself as father, looking over the shoulder of those reading his letters to her, watching himself watched by his superiors and by those colonized subjects around him. In this multifocal gaze he watches his world brim with possibility and halt with failure. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1466

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Relevant to my reading on performative archives — Valck’s multifocal gaze is a concrete instance of the epistolary archive as staged self-presentation.