Description
This paper explores the everyday acts of anti-colonial resistance performed by colonised women in the settler colony German Southwest Africa (1884–1915), present-day Namibia. Drawing on the colonial archives, my paper uncovers everyday gestures of dissent that colonised women performed in the settler’s home. For instance, colonised women fleeing the settler’s farms or colonised women repeatedly refusing to perform menial tasks for their German employers. I argue that these gestures of refusing colonial oppression should be considered as anti-colonial resistance, no matter how uncoordinated and minute they may have been. This paper contributes to research shedding light on how subaltern experiences matter in international relations. Here, I go beyond exploring how the international affects everyday life by illustrating how the everyday lives of non-elites affect the international. The colonial archives leave us with irreversible epistemic violence that erases the voices of colonised women from the writing of empire. My endeavour to recover traces of colonised women’s agency demands reading against the archival grain, which involves stretching the boundaries of the colonial archives. As reading against the grain has only received considerable attention in history and literary studies, this paper also seeks to offer a methodological intervention in social sciences scholarship.
