Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
For more than fifty years, Mau Mau has continuously provoked and inspired scholars to original work. In recent years, books by David Anderson, E. S. Atieno Odhiambo and John Lonsdale, and Caroline Elkins have shown that there is still considerable life left in the topic. The latest book to form part of this most recent revisionist wave is S. M. Shamsul Alam's Rethinking the Mau Mau in Colonial Kenya, which brings a different and novel approach to the subject.
Alam - an associate professor of sociology at Southern Oregon University - states that his aim in Rethinking the Mau Mau is not to 'put the movement in its broad historical context', but rather to '"read" the Mau Mau "event" from a postcolonial analytical perspective' (p. ix). Alam is concerned with the nature of colonial power and the ability of those resisting it to 'construct a counterhegemony' (p. 2). Indeed, the influence of Gramsci and the Subaltern School looms large over the entire text. Rethinking the Mau Mau comprises nine chapters addressing different aspects of the conflict, from 'Domination and resistance: writings on Mau Mau' (Chapter 2), to 'Women and Mau Mau' (Chapter 4), to 'Mau Mau and the critique of nationalism' (Chapter 6). In an effort to link these somewhat disparate chapters, Alam states that they are woven together by the 'theme of power and resistance against colonialism and an attempt to establish a free and just society in Kenya' (p. ix), though this...