Jean Comaroff, University of Chicago - "Detective Fictions: In Pursuit of Sovereignty in the Postcolony"
Jean Comaroff, University of Chicago
"Detective Fictions: In Pursuit of Sovereignty in the Postcolony"
Abstract: Walter Benjamin famously insisted that modern police wielded a “ghostly,” all-pervasive violence, called upon at points where the state is unable to govern by legal means. Yet many African postcolonies are haunted by a different specter: the waning efficacy of enforcement, the ambiguity of authority, and the apparent abandonment of subjects by the state. This paper, part of a larger work entitled "Policing the Postcolony," examines the problematic relation of law, violence, and sovereignty in contemporary African polities, especially in post-apartheid South Africa. It focuses on the "metaphysics of disorder" that is palpable in popular culture here, and the kinds of forensic fetishes that seem to be conjured in its wake.
« Return to Research Seminars