The preoccupation across the world these days with lawlessness finds focus evermore in dramas of crime and punishment, be they ‚factual,‘ fake, or fictional or – inevitably – admixtures of all three. Ours is an epoch, neither the first nor the last, in which law-making, law-breaking and enforcement are especially critical registers in which societies construct, contest, and confront truths about themselves. This talk explores how and why the forensic has become such a key medium of the evidentiary in late modern times, and why crime figures and figurations evoke a paradox of dis/trust – a deep hermetic of suspicion alongside a profound faith in possible redemption through better, purer „quantifacts“ about crime and corruption.
Jean Comaroff is Professor of African and Afro-American Studies and of Anthropology as well as Oppenheimer Fellow in African Studies at Harvard University. Her research, primarily conducted in southern Africa, has centered on processes of social and cultural transformation – the making and unmaking of colonial society, the nature of the postcolony, and the late modern world viewed from the Global South. Her writing has covered a range of topics, from religion, medicine and body politics to state formation, crime, democracy and difference.
John L. Comaroff is Hugh K. Foster Professor of African and African-American Studies and of Anthropology, and Oppenheimer Research Fellow in African Studies as well as Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town. His current research in South Africa is on crime, policing, and the workings of the state, on democracy and difference, and on postcolonial politics.
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