ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes to tackle a theoretically complex subject, namely, the representation of intimate relationships in contexts intensely marked both by rather ancient processes of creolisation as well as colonial and postcolonial imaginings of local identities and nationhood. The aim of these imaginings may be to construct an internally homogeneous nation or ethnic group, or at least to construct an image of the nation where differences can be accounted for and negotiated within a common imaginative framework. As I have previously argued, intimate relationships in creolised contexts seem to have historically originated in precolonial times in the Indian Ocean area (and perhaps also the Mediterranean, with which the Indian Ocean has very ancient links) and spread from there to other areas. At any rate, there seems to be an interconnected set of both imaginings and social practices related to those relationships that is quite widespread.1
