Laura Ann Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule.(Book Review)

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, May, 2004 by Alexander, Claire

Laura Ann Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002, 335 pp., 15.95 [pounds sterling] p.b. (ISBN 5-0231-112)

In Race and the Education of Desire, published in 1995, Stoler offered an influential re-reading of Foucault's work on the History of Sexuality, which argued for the centrality of constructions of race and empire to the formation of European sexualities. This later work represents a continuation of these groundbreaking concerns, exploring the intersection of sexualities and race in the organisation of colonial life. Focusing primarily on the Dutch colonisation of Indonesia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the book explores the ways in which the broad...