| Summary: | The Hagiography of Ethiopian Saint Woletta Petros was recently
translated from Ge’ez into English by Wendy Belcher and Michael Kleiner.
Belcher has no knowledge of Ge’ez and simple errors in the translation
suggest that Kleiner lacks the fluency required to accurately interpret the
language. A western lens with a deliberate distortion of the facts has been
applied to the text, using contemporary western understandings of
marriage and monastic life to interpret a 17th century Ethiopian nun.
Contemporary ethnic politics have been inserted into the interpretation in
a way that reproduces negative racial binaries, and relies heavily on the
colonial racialization of African identities and western color prejudice that
does not exist in Ethiopia. This has resulted in a colonial rewrite of one of
Ethiopia’s most holy books. Belcher represents Woletta Petros as a violent,
diseased and lustful nun, reproducing racist stereotypes about black
women. Sexual scenes and a same-sex partnership between nuns have been
inserted into the text where they do not exist in the Ge’ez original. This
article will detail the most significant misinterpretations in Belcher and
Kleiner’s translation. It will also offer an Ethiopian interpretation of
Woletta Petros, considering her legacy within context and drawing on the
testimony of the local scholars. The article will show that the translation,
as well as Belcher’s subsequent publications around Woletta Petros, constitute colonial scholarship, where a foreigner who cannot understand
the language is elevated to the status of expert at the expense of the local
people who can not only read and write the language, but also have decadeslong
training in the interpretation of these important holy texts. The article
will demonstrate that the colonial practice of taking African intellectual
resources and using them to rewrite African history is not a relic of the
past, but an ongoing and supported practice within universities. Major
universities, as important sites of knowledge production, should not
contribute to racial prejudices and distortions of African history by
supporting projects that are carried out by scholars who deliberately
exclude or distort the voices and experiences of local people. This article
seeks to prompt a change in the writing of African history, where the agency
of black people to narrate their own histories and experiences is respected
and supported.
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