Front cover image for The dialectics of modernity on a South African frontier

The dialectics of modernity on a South African frontier

Jean Comaroff (Author)
In the second of a proposed three-volume study, John and Jean Comaroff continue their exploration of colonial evangelism and modernity in South Africa. Moving beyond the opening moments of the encounter between the British Nonconformist missions and the Southern Tswana peoples, Of Revelation and Revolution, volume 2, explores the complex transactions -- both epic and ordinary -- along this colonial frontier.The Comaroffs trace many of the major themes of twentieth-century South African history back to these formative encounters. The relationship between the British evangelists and the Southern Tswana engendered complex exchanges of goods, signs, and cultural markers that shaped not only African existence but also bourgeois modernity "back home" in England. We see, in this volume, how the colonial attempt to "civilize" Africa set in motion a dialectical process that refashioned the everyday lives of all those drawn into its purview, creating hybrid cultural forms and potent global forces that persist in the postcolonial age.This fascinating study shows how the initiatives of the colonial missions collided with local traditions, giving rise to new cultural practices, new patterns of production and consumption, new senses of style and beauty, and new forms of class distinction and ethnicity. The Comaroffs have succeeded in providing a model for the study of colonial encounters by insisting on its dialectical nature. Colonialism can no longer be seen as a one-sided relationship between the conquering and the conquered. It is, rather, a complex system of reciprocal determinations, one whose legacy is very much with us today."The Comaroffs achieve an extra-ordinary doublecombination: they are coauthors of a book which also marries the fascination of erudition with beautiful prose. This is a scholarly work that reads with the grace of imaginative literature. Original and wonderful, rising on the horizon of ideas that inform our present, it is certainly one of my Books of the Year". -- Nadine Gordimer
Print Book, English, 1997
XXIII, 588 Seiten : Illustrationen.
9780226114446, 9780226114439, 0226114449, 0226114430
174376648
List of Illustrations
xi(2)
Prefacexiii(8)
Chronologyxxi
ONE INTRODUCTION
1(62)
TWO PREACHERS AND PROPHETS The Domestication of the Sacred Word
63(56)
THREE CULTIVATION, COLONIALISM, AND CHRISTIANITY Toward a New African Genesis
119(47)
FOUR CURRENCIES OF CONVERSION Of Markets, Money, and Value
166(52)
FIVE FASHIONING THE COLONIAL SUBJECT The Empire's Old Clothes
218(56)
SIX MANSIONS OF THE LORD Architecture, Interiority, Domesticity
274(49)
SEVEN THE MEDICINE OF GOD'S WORD Saving the Soul by Tending the Flesh
323(42)
EIGHT NEW PERSONS, OLD SUBJECTS Rights, Identities, Moral Communities
365(40)
NINE CONCLUSION
405(10)
Appendix415(2)
Notes417(90)
Bibliography507(54)
Index561