Inscribing Memories on Dead Bodies: Sex, Gender, and State Power in the Julie Ward Death in Kenya

Abstract

This article examines speculations on the circumstances surrounding the 1988 murder of the 28-year-old British tourist Julie Ward in Kenya, with a particular focus on how circulating discourses in Kenyan and British social imaginaries shaped these speculations. The article suggests that Ward's death took place in a discursive landscape marked by deeply layered and intermeshed contours of British and Kenyan social memories, which have over time crystallised into popular wisdom regarding the multiple intersections between sex/uality, race, gender and state power in Kenyan and British social imaginaries. Against this background, an understanding of social memories yields insights into the interpretative patterns emerging from the Julie Ward mystery, and the prominence of sex/uality in these speculations, as mapped along tropes of interracial rape, female sexual moralities and phallic state power.

Notes

1. Williams, Marxism and Literature, 122.

2. Whitlock, Intimate Empire, 117.

3. Whitlock, Intimate Empire, 117.

4. Warner, Publics, 90.

5. Ward, The Animals, 121, where Dr Shaker's allegedly altered autopsy report is reproduced.

6. Ward, The Animals, 121, where Dr Shaker's allegedly altered autopsy report is reproduced., 119–20.

7. Only her left leg, skull, jaws and spinal column were recovered. The rest of her body appeared to have been burnt to ashes.

8. Hoch, White Hero, 45.

9. Hoch, White Hero, 47.

10. Ashcroft et al. , Key Concepts; McClintock, Imperial Leather

11. Attwell, Rewriting Modernity, 3.

12. Perhaps the most iconic figure is the Khoi woman, Sara Baartman, whose body was exhibited across Europe as epitomising this aberrant African sexuality.

13. Cornwell, ‘George Webb Hardy’, 441.

14. Devereux, ‘New Woman, New World’, 15 and 16.

15. Nead, Myths of Sexuality, 92 (cited in Devereux, ‘New Woman, New World’, 11).

16. Samuelson, Remembering the Nation, 2.

17. Cornwell, ‘George Webb Hardy’, 443–44.

18. Whitlock, Intimate Empire, 114.

19. Ward, The Animals, 381.

20. Gavron, Darkness in Eden, 183.

21. Maughan-Brown, Land, Freedom and Fiction, 124.

22. As Duder, ‘Love and the Lions’, persuasively argues, popular literature of the colonial ‘Kenya novel’ played a central role in constructing and circulating ideas about Kenya, including notions of interracial rape. Robert Ruark's Uhuru, for example, vividly explores the fears of the threat of black men to white women during the emergency period in colonial Kenya.

23. Le Carré, Constant Gardener, 91.

24. Le Carré, Constant Gardener, 65.

25. See Morrison and Lacour's Birth of a Nation'hood, for detailed discussion of the O. J. Simpson case.

26. Pape, ‘Black and White’, 702.

27. Mbembe, ‘Provisional Notes’, 1–33. I use the phrase here in Mbembe's sense, to refer to an economy of pleasure associated with political power in the African state, which includes sexual indulgence. But beyond this ‘taste for lecherous living’, the sexual indulgence is also an important site for the performance of power, sometimes through sexual violence.

28. Ward, The Animals, 386.

29. Stern, ‘Is This the Truth?’, 23.

30. Stern, ‘Is This the Truth?’, 23.

31. Stern, ‘Is This the Truth?’, 24.

32. On private armies and vigilante groups in Kenyan politics, see Kagwanja, ‘Facing Mount Kenya’, and Anderson, ‘Vigilantes’.

33. Wa Njenga, ‘My Encounter’, 2.

34. Wa Njenga, ‘I Saw Julie Raped’, 2.

35. Ngotho, ‘Julie Ward Inquest’, 3.

36. Barkham, ‘Coroner's Verdict’, 1.

37. Barkham, ‘Father Vindicated’, 1.

38. Kariuki, ‘“Paramoia”’, and Haugerud Culture of Politics.

39. Odhiambo, ‘Democracy’, 178–201.

40. See Anderson's Histories of the Hanged for an in-depth discussion of the use of detention without trial in colonial Kenya.

41. Odhiambo, ‘Democracy’, 178–201.

42. Musila, ‘Remapping Urban Modernities’, 39–40.

43. Le Carré's Constant Gardener offers a fictional portrait of Scotland Yard's involvement as a public relations exercise. In the novel, two Scotland Yard detectives are pulled out of investigations into the murder of Tessa Quayle in Kenya when they come uncomfortably close to unmasking British complicity. They are replaced with a new set of detectives who cooperate in these staged investigations by arriving at pre-decided conclusions in their investigations.

44. Bayart, State in Africa, 60–86.

45. See Citizens for Justice, We Lived to Tell, for survivors’ accounts of the Nyayo House torture chambers.

46. Wa Njenga, ‘I Saw Julie Raped’, 2. See Odhiambo and Cohen's Risks of Knowledge for parallels with the Ouko case.

47. Bayart, State in Africa, xviii.

48. Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, 23.

49. Roberts, ‘Body of the Princess’, 33.

50. Judge Fidahussein, Judgment on the State v. Magiroi and Kipeen, 9.

51. Pieced together from Jeremy Gavron and John Ward's books, and Judge Fidahussein's Judgment in the case of the State v. Kipeen and Magiroi. ts of accuracy, and in recogntion Magiroi. This is inodge. They ended up making love.liking to her and allowed her to ca

52. Gavron, Darkness in Eden, 144–45.

53. Gavron, Darkness in Eden, 144–45.

54. Nation Team, ‘Cover-up Alleged’, 3.

55. See Omondi, ‘Gender and Political Economy’, and Kibicho, ‘Tourism and the Sex Trade’.

56. Omondi, ‘Gender and Political Economy’, 14; Nation Reporter, ‘US Sailor’, 1–2.

57. Ngotho, ‘Murder Mystery’, 3.

58. Ngotho, ‘Murder Mystery’, 3.

59. Ngotho, ‘Murder Mystery’, 3. See also Kimondo, ‘Judy: Blood Clues Found’, 4.

60. Gavron, Darkness in Eden, 103.

61. Bennett, ‘Texts, Readers’, 5.

62. Omondi, ‘Gender and the Political Economy’, 9.

63. Le Carré, Constant Gardener, 125.

64. See Fox's White Mischief for an informative reconstruction of Happy Valley culture.

65. Akama, ‘Marginalization of the Maasai’, 716.

66. Sayer, Kenya, 60.