Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power

This landmark book tracks matters of intimacy to investigate matters of state in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Indonesia, particularly the critical role played by sexual arrangements and affective attachments in creating colonial categories and distinguishing the ruler from the ruled. Arguing that social classification is not a benign cultural act but a potent political one, Ann Laura Stoler's essays focus on parents and parenting, nursing mothers, servants, orphanages, and abandoned children to reveal why they were understood as so essential to imperial governance and why they have been so consistently absent from its historiography. In a new preface, Stoler takes up a broad range of problematics raised in the first edition, including the analytics of comparison, the treatment of the intimate, and more.

This landmark book tracks matters of intimacy to investigate matters of state in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Indonesia, particularly the critical role played by sexual arrangements and affective attachments in creating colonial categories and distinguishing the ruler from the ruled. Arguing that social classification is not a benign cultural act but a potent political one, Ann Laura Stoler's essays focus on parents and parenting, nursing mothers, servants, orphanages, and abandoned children to reveal why they were understood as so essential to imperial governance and why they have been so consistently absent from its historiography. In a new preface, Stoler takes up a broad range of problematics raised in the first edition, including the analytics of comparison, the treatment of the intimate, and more.