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Girl at the margin: historicizing Adunni’s subjective rendition of colonial Lagos, 1930–60

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 June 2022

Tunde Decker
Tunde Decker*
Affiliation:
Osun State University, Osogbo, Nigeria
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article tells one of the many stories that remain largely untold despite the vast literature on colonial Lagos history. Although the social history of Lagos has witnessed increasing interest on the part of historians and scholars from other disciplines and has been told in relation to sex, childhood, social welfare, state, gender and elitism, many personal renditions of the city’s history are hidden from mainstream narratives. The article examines one such personal history. In particular, it exhumes narratives from the phenomenological content of Adunni’s story – of teenage and early adult years, largely lived in the late colonial period. Adunni’s personal experiences speak to those of other living (though few) individuals whose status as living archives often enriches scholarly interrogations but who are regarded as sources of history rather than history itself. This article presents Adunni as a telling example of this neglected aspect of colonial Lagos history.

Résumé

Résumé

Cet article raconte l’une des nombreuses histoires encore largement tues malgré l’abondante littérature consacrée à l’histoire coloniale de Lagos. Bien que l’histoire sociale de Lagos connaisse un intérêt croissant de la part des historiens et des chercheurs d’autres disciplines, et qu’elle soit racontée au regard du sexe, de l’enfance, de la protection sociale, de l’État, du genre et de l’élitisme, de nombreuses interprétations personnelles de l’histoire de la ville n’apparaissent pas dans les narratifs traditionnels. Cet article examine une des ces histoires personnelles. En particulier, il exhume des narratifs du contenu phénoménologique de l’histoire d’Adunni, de l’adolescence et du début de l’âge adulte, essentiellement vers la fin de la période coloniale. Les expériences personnelles d’Adunni parlent à celles d’autres personnes vivantes (bien que peu nombreuses) dont le statut d’archives vivantes enrichit souvent les interrogations savantes mais qui sont considérées comme des sources d’histoire plutôt que comme l’histoire elle-même. Cet article présente Adunni comme un exemple parlant de cet aspect négligé de l’histoire coloniale de Lagos.

Type
Women in Nigerian society
Information
Africa , Volume 92 , Issue 3 , May 2022 , pp. 315 - 333
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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