In 2013, the UK government settled a class action suit, which alleged that the British Colonial Government had subjected Kenyans to detainment, ill treatment and torture during the 1952–1960 ‘Kenya Emergency’. During the trial proceedings, the efforts of three expert historical witnesses for the prosecution – Caroline Elkins, David Anderson and Huw Bennett – led to the discovery of a cache of over 8,000 historical files from 36 former British colonies. The material contained within these documents suggested not only that Britain was aware of pervasive human rights abuses occurring throughout Kenya during the Emergency, but that the use of such violence was in fact endorsed and systematically regulated at the highest levels of the colonial administration. Drawing on Foucault’s conception of historical archives as ‘systems of discursivity’, and making use of the testimonies of the three experts, this article explores how the British Colonial Administration was able to dominate the discursive space surrounding Kenyan law and Mau Mau identity, allowing it both to justify the implementation of systemic violence throughout the Emergency, and to evade legal responsibility for these abuses at the time, and for decades afterward.

2013 年，英国政府解决了一项集体诉讼，指控英国殖民政府在 1952 年至 1960 年的“肯尼亚紧急情况”期间对肯尼亚人实施拘留、虐待和酷刑。在审判过程中，三名控方历史专家证人——卡罗琳·埃尔金斯、大卫·安德森和休·贝内特——的努力导致发现了来自 36 个前英国殖民地的 8,000 多份历史档案。这些文件中包含的材料不仅表明英国意识到紧急状态期间肯尼亚各地普遍存在侵犯人权的情况，而且这种暴力的使用实际上得到了殖民政府最高层的认可和系统监管。借鉴福柯将历史档案视为“话语系统”的概念，