Theory From the South: A Rejoinder

African and African American Studie

Reflections on Liberalism

How do nation-states in the twenty-first century, nation-states increasingly forced to come to terms with the ethnic heterogeneity of their citizens, deal with the problem of cultural difference? How, in particular, does the Constitution of post-apartheid South Africa — widely believed to be the most enlightened in the contemporary world, the most tolerant of diversity — strike a balance between the ‘One Law’ of ‘The Nation’ and the plurality of customary beliefs sustained, as a matter of right, by the various peoples who make up this postcolony? What happens, in the course of everyday existence, when Constitution and Custom appear to contradict one another — and to do so in such a manner as to raise questions of basic human rights, of freedom of belief, even of life-and-death? These questions are addressed in the paper through a critical, broadly situated analysis of the confrontation between the Constitution of South Africa and the Kingdom of Custom that continues to prevail in one of its provinces, the North West. By exploring a complicated case that drew the State, via its Human Rights Commission, into open conflict with a Tswana chiefdom—a case about death rituals argued, before a high court judge, in the lexicon of modern jurisprudence — it shows how a ‘living constitution’, tolerant of everyday ambiguity, is being forged in the space of strategic engagement opened up by the alternative languages and cultures of legality that exist in this ‘policultural’ postcolony. And in others like it.African and African American Studie

Etnografia e imaginação histórica: Breve introdução sobre as relações entre antropologia e arte, desafios analíticos e (in)segurança

African and African American Studie

Bétail, perles et pièces de monnaie : L’équivalence et les transformations de la monnaie dans les territoires coloniaux d’Afrique du Sud

Cet essai porte sur les mécanismes qui permettent les échanges équitables entre différents ordres de valeur, dans la production de la société et de l’histoire. Alors que les équivalences entre monnaies, la normalisation et la conversion sont présentes dans la plupart des théories sur l’argent et la marchandisation, leur nature en tant que processus social n’a pas été suffisamment étudiée, surtout dans la construction du caractère universalisant des idéologies et des régimes politiques et économiques modernes. Notre analyse examine la confrontation des différents régimes de valeur à l’occasion de la rencontre entre les Tswana d’Afrique du Sud et les colonisateurs européens, ainsi que les conflits et la médiation complexe auxquels ce processus a donné lieu. Le bétail, les pièces de monnaie et les contrats, qui avaient la possibilité à la fois de renforcer et de nier les différences, ont rapidement été investis de qualités magiques. Mais les peuples colonisés étaient également sensibles à la faculté de ces monnaies de faciliter ou d’empêcher la convertibilité, et connaissaient les formes d’abstraction et d’incorporation qu’ils impliquaient. C’est pourquoi, en Afrique du Sud et ailleurs, ces monnaies ont souvent servi de moyen de contestation de la valeur autour de laquelle les luttes coloniales se sont jouées.This essay explores the mechanisms that render equitable and negotiable different orders of value – in the production of society and history. While equilibration, standardization and conversion are implicated in most theories of money and commodi?cation, their nature as social processes has not been adequately speci?ed, above all in the construction of universalizing ideologies and modernist political and economic regimes. We examine the ways in which different regimes of value, brought up against one another in the encounter between the southern Tswana peoples and European colonizers, became the subject of both con?ict and complex mediation. Cows, coin and contracts – which had the capacity to construct and negate difference – soon were invested here with magical qualities. But colonized peoples were also sensitive to the capacity of such currencies to enable or impede convertibility and to the forms of abstraction and incorporation they permit. Which is why, in South Africa and elsewhere, those currencies often became metonymic of the contestations of value on which colonial struggles, tout court, were played out.Este ensayo aborda los mecanismos que posibilitan los intercambios justos entre diferentes órdenes de valor, en la producción de la sociedad y de la historia. Aunque las equivalencias entre monedas, la normalización y la conversión están presentes en la mayor parte de las teorías del dinero y de la mercancía, su naturaleza en tanto que procesos sociales no ha sido suficientemente estudiada, sobre todo en la construcción del carácter universalizante de las ideologías y de los regímenes políticos y económicos modernos. Nuestro artículo examina la manera en que diferentes regímenes de valor han estado en oposición en las relaciones entre los Tswana de África del Sur y los colonizadores europeos, así como los conflictos y la mediación compleja que este proceso ha hecho surgir. El ganado, la moneda y los contratos, que tenían la posibilidad tanto de intensificar como de negar las diferencias, han sido rápidamente investidos de cualidades mágicas. Pero los pueblos colonizados también eran sensibles a la capacidad de esas monedas para facilitar o impedir la convertibilidad y conocían las formas de abstracción y de incorporación que posibilitaban. Por eso, en África del Sur como en otras partes, esas monedas han sido con mucha frecuencia los medios para refutar el valor en torno del cual se han realizado las luchas coloniales

Naturalizando la nación: aliens, apocalipsis y el estado postcolonial

Este ensayo examina la situación del estado-nación postcolonial a través del prisma de la catástrofe medio ambiental: cómo las plantas «invasoras» pueden llegar a ser un apremiante problema político y lo que esto puede revelar acerca de las cambiantes relaciones entre ciudadanos, comunidad y soberanía nacional bajo condiciones neo-liberales. Siguiendo estas cuestiones en relación al caso de la «nueva» Sudáfrica, planteamos tres características claves de las políticas postcoloniales en una era del laissez-faire: la refiguración del sujeto-ciudadano, la crisis de las fronteras de soberanía y la despolitización de la política. Bajo tales condiciones los «invasores» -tanto plantas como personas- terminan encarnando básicas contradicciones de frontera y pertenencia; la naturaleza extraña (alien-natura) proporciona un lenguage para proclamar nuevas formas de discriminación en plena cultura del «post-racismo» y los derechos civiles.This paper examines the predicament of the postcolonial nation-state through the prism of environmental catastrophe: how is it that plant “invaders” can become an urgent political issue, and what might this reveal of the shifting relations among citizenship, community, and national sovereignty under neo-liberal conditions? Pursuing these questions in relation to a case from the “new” South Africa, we posit three key features of postcolonial polities in an era of laissez-faire: the refiguration of the subject-citizen, the crisis of sovereign borders, and the depoliticization of politics. Under such conditions, aliens ˆ both plants and people ˆ come to embody core contradictions of boundedness and belonging; and alien-nature provides a language for voicing new forms of discrimination amidst a culture of “post-racism” and civil rights

‘Anthropologists Are Talking’: About Anthropology and Post-Apartheid South Africa

In 2010, South Africa hosted the first World Cup in soccer ever to take place on the African continent. Twenty years after the fall of Apartheid, South Africa presents a series of fractured and contradictory images to the outside world. It is, on the one hand, an economic powerhouse in sub-Saharan Africa, but on the other hand a society in which socio-economic inequalities have continued to flourish and increase. What can anthropology tell us about contemporary South Africa? As part of an ongoing series in public anthropology, Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Postdoctoral Fellow Sindre Bangstad sat down for a public conversation with Professors John L. and Jean Comaroff in The House of Literature in Oslo, Norway, on 28 September 2010.African and African American Studie

O retorno de Khulekani Khumalo, cativo de zumbis: impostura, lei, e paradoxos da noção de pessoa na África do Sul pós-colonial

O que poderiam impostores nos dizer sobre a noção de pessoa em tempos “pós-coloniais”? O que a impostura nos diz sobre os meios de produzir individualidade, identidade, viabilidade social? Se a figura do falso duplo há tempos assombra noções ocidentais de pessoa, em tempos de Modernidade tardia imposturas de diversos tipos se tornam cada vez mais intrigantes. Na África do Sul pós- apartheid, onde sequestro de identidade, plágio, falsificação, ou mesmo crimes falsos acontecem cotidianamente, a impostura é especialmente comum. Discutindo um célebre caso nacional – o alegado “retorno” de um famoso músico Zulu que havia morrido três anos antes – esse artigo explora o que tais atos de impostura podem nos dizer sobre autoconstrução pós-colonial, sobre a noção de pessoa sob condições sociais contemporâneas, e sobre as dificuldades criadas por tudo isso para a Lei, a evidência, e o sentido de reconhecimento.What might imposture tell us about personhood in ‘postcolonial’ times? About the means of producing selfhood, identity, social viability? While the figure of the false double has long haunted Western ideas of personhood, imposture of various kinds has become ever more striking in late modern times. It is especially common in post-apartheid South Africa, for instance, where identity theft, plagiarism, fakery, even counterfeit crime are everyday occurrences. Taking a celebrated national case – the alleged ‘return’ of a famous Zulu musician who died three years ago – this paper explores what such acts of imposture might tell us about postcolonial self-fashioning, about personhood under contemporary social conditions, and about the difficulties posed by all this for law, evidence, and the meaning of recognition