A Feather Bed Dictionary: Colonialism and Sexuality

Abstract

In this paper I utilise 'autoethnography'. In dialogue with my white ancestor's Dr Sidney Spencer Kachalola Broomfield's autobiography Kachalola or the Mighty Hunter (1931), I examine his representation of the black female body in Northern Rhodesia (present day Zambia). Broomfield presents the black female body as decadent, demonised and sexualised, accusing it of conquering white men regardless of education, class and religious affiliation. Firstly, I question how the black female body sexuality and reproduction became site of social, political and racial contest and entanglement and contradictorily also the site of collaboration between white and black men; secondly, I examine the ongoing legacies of Broomfield's representation.