life and sovereignity achille mbembe
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Life, Sovereignty, and Terror in the Fiction of Amos TutuolaAuthor(s): Achille Mbembe and R. H. MitschSource: Research in African Literatures, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Winter, 2003), pp. 1-26Published by: Indiana University Press
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8/20/2019 Life and Sovereignity Achille Mbembe
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Life,
Sovereignty,
and Terror
in
the
Fiction
of
Amos Tutuola
Achille
Mbembe
The
subject
s a
multiplicity.
-Nietzsche
h e
remarks
that follow bear
upon
the
general question
of
life,
sover-
eignty,
and
terror.
To
my
mind,
life does not
exist
in-and-of-itself.
It does
not reflect a
generic
property per
se,
but a
mode
of
being-
in-the-world,
that
is,
a
way
of
inhabiting
the
world;
in
short, a
manner of
confrontation
and
familiarity
with the world and
its full
range
of
potenti-
alities. The
ultimate
expression
of
sovereignty
resides,
to a
large
degree,
in
the
power
and
the
capacity
to dictate who
may
live and
who must
die.
To
exercise
sovereignty
is to exercise control
over
mortality
and to define life
as the
deployment
and
manifestation
of
power.
More
precisely,
I
am interested
in these manners
of
living
and
risking
death
that either
are
situated
beyond
the
political
as
a
vernacular
(and
socially
obligatory)
language
of the social
bond,
or
push
its
frontiers
to
the
point
of
relegating
the
political
to
border
zones;
or,
by
simply ignoring
it
altogether, end up revealing its extraordinary vulnerability and weakening
the
authority
and
centrality
that
our era has wound
up
attributing
to it.
These forms
of existence are born of
singular
experiences
that
I
choose
to call
threshold or
specular experiences.
These
are,
essentially,
extreme
forms
of
human
life,
death-worlds,
forms
of
social existence
in which
vast
populations
are
subjected
to
conditions of
life
that confer
upon
them
the status of
living
dead
(ghosts).
In
the
contemporary
African
context,
these extreme forms
of
human existence
are
experienced through
the
corruption
of the senses
as well
as
through
the horror that
accompanies
wars and
outbreaks of terror
(see
Mbembe,
On the
Postcolony).
To treat the question of the languages of life in their relationship
with
sovereignty, specular
violence,
and
terror,
I
will
depart
from
what
is
conventionally
called Western
thought. Forgetting
for a moment its
heterogeneity,
I will
demonstrate how
(and
implicitly
critique
the
ways
in
which),
when it
treats
the
languages
of
life,
Western tradition-more than
any
other-accords a critical role to the notions of
self, truth,
and
time.'
Using
the
metaphor
of the
mirror,
I will base
my critique
on
a
re-reading
of
two African
texts,
The Palm-Wine Drinkard and
My Life
in
the Bush
of
Ghosts.
This
critique
rests
upon
the
notion--developed
by
Tutuola-of the
ghost,
or
better,
of the
wandering subject.
The
metaphor
of the
mirror,
I
will
argue,
allows us to
envisage
ghostly power
and
sovereignty
as
aspects
of the real
integral
to
a world
of
life and
terror
rather than tied to a
world of
appear-
ances.
Finally,
I
will show how
Tutuola's
fiction allows us to
conceive
of
the
idea
of
life,
sovereignty,
and terror as
fundamentally
linked to that
of
the
imagination,
work,
and remembrance.
Research
in
AfricanLiteraturesVol.
34,
No.
4
Winter
2003: 1-26
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2
Research
in
African
Literatures
Dualisms
Five
attributes have
been
decisive
in
the
articulation
of
a certain
idea of
being,
time
and
truth
in
modern Western
criticism.
The first is the
quasi-
ontological privilege granted to reason over all other forms of human
understanding
(emotions,
passions,
and
feelings).
Whether
the
subject
under
consideration
is a
knowing,
an
aesthetic,
or
a
speaking subject,
acting
or
producing
and
manipulating
tools,
it is
always
a
question
of
a
self
up against
an
object,
in an
attitude that aims at the
mastery
of
the
said
object
by
means
of
reason and
technique
(see
Hegel,
Phenomenology of
Mind;
Heidegger,
Being
and
Time;
Sartre,
Being
and
Nothingness);
Husserl,
Ideas).
A
corollary
of reason is the
emphasis
placed
upon
self-possession,
the
desire
for
self-perfection,
and
self-mastery (self-government)
through
the
development
of
interiority
(see
Foucault,
History
of
Sexuality;
Ricoeur,
Oneself
as Another; Charles
Taylor,
Sources
of
the
Self;
Elias, La civilization des
moeurs).
To these
attributes,
we must
add two others:
the
differentiation
between
the human
being
and
other animals
through
work
(Marx),
and
the
importance
of
desire and
pleasure
in
the
calculus
of
happiness
(see
Freud,
Civilization
and its
Discontents;
see also
Lacan,
Four Fundamental
Concepts,
and
Foucault,
History
of Sexuality
3).
Self-possession
and freedom with
respect
to
others as
well as
happiness
are
experienced
through
the conscious
mastery
of
the
world,
of one's own
body
and
libido.
In
turn,
mastery
of the world
is
achieved
essentially through
knowledge
and access to truth-the order
of
knowledge,
the order of
truth,
and the
will
to
power constituting
the
ultimate
foundations of
all
subjectivity
and
every happy
life.
Now,
at the base of these
postulates
are
found inherent
dualisms.
These
dualisms have been the
object
of
well-known
critiques,
even
if
it
is
not
certain
that we have drawn from
them all
the
possible consequences:
the
opposition
between the affective and
the
cognitive,
the
subject
and the
object,
appearance
and
essence,
reason
and
passion,
the
corporeal
and the
ideal,
the
human and the
animal,
reality
and
representation,
the
one
and
the
multiple. By foregrounding
these
dichotomies,
modern
Western
tradi-
tion has
favored
thinking
on the self
that
privileges
above
all the
ability
to
reason
(argumentation and deliberation) and the will to power, giving short
shrift to
the
ability
to
feel,
to
remember,
and
to
imagine.
The reason for
this
is the
longstanding
belief
in
Western
metaphysics
that
the
struggle
for
freedom and
happiness, sovereignty,
and
self-rule
is
first
and
foremost a
struggle against
the
libido
and inner
turmoil,
the war
within
us
that
drives
us
to
wage
war
upon
one
another.
The world of the
body,
the
passions,
and the
senses has been
historically
regarded
as the realm of the
false,
the
dream,
and
the mask
(see
Hume,
Treatise
of
the
Passions;
Descartes,
The
Pas-
sions
of
the
Soul;
Hobbes,
Human
Nature).
The senses
in
particular
are
seen
as
deceptive,
and
passions
deemed
ultimately unintelligible.
The
world of
instincts and animality, Western tradition has long held, cannot be relied
upon
to
produce
truth,
knowledge
or a
happy
life.
According
to this
outlook,
there can
be no self
except
in the
stability
and
permanence
of
the
being. Identity
being essentially
incompatible
with
change,
the self is
said
to
always
be identical to itself. It matters little
what
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Research
in
AfricanLiteratures
The
self
that
has
identified with
that
image
and has
taken
it
on is inscribed
in
an irreducible
line of fiction. The
correspondences
that unite the
I to
the
image
are
projected
as
ghosts,
in
a
completely
ambiguous
relationship
of
the
subject
with the world of its fabrication. On
the other
hand,
the
mirror is the
place
where likeness redoubles
presence.
According
to
Lacan,
the
specular
image
seems
to be
the
threshold
of
the
visible
world,
if
we
trust the
disposition
in the mirror
presented
in
hallucination
and in
dream
by
the
imago
of the
body
itself
[...
]
or
if
we notice
the role of the
instrument of the mirror in the
apparitions
of
the
double where
psychic
realities are
manifested,
realities that are
moreover
heterogeneous
( Le
stade du miroir
93-101).
Following
Lacan,
three
properties
of the
mirror are
of
interest to us
in the
interpretation
of
Tutuola's
fiction. These three
properties
allow
us
to
re-conceptualize
the
relationship
between
the
ghost, terror,
and
life
on
the one
hand,
and,
on the
other,
the
function
of the
imagination
and
remembrance
in
this
relationship.
First of
all
there is the
property
of
the
marvelous.
In his
study
of
the mirror
of
Medusa,Jean-Pierre
Vernant
argues
that instead
of
reflecting
appearances
and
returning
the
image
of visible
objects placed
before
it,
the
mirror
opens
a
breach
in the
backdrop
of
'phe-
nomena,'
displays
the invisible
[...
.]
and lets it be seen
in
the
brilliance
of
a
mysterious epiphany
(Mortals
and Immortals
141).
This
property
derives
from
two
types
of
powers belonging
to
the mirror: the
power (experienced
by
the self
looking
at
itself)
first to
project,
create
an
appearance,
and
second to discover its own image.
In
an
operation
that is as
empirical
as it is
imaginative,
the self becomes
its
own
spectator.
The self is
present
at
the
spectacle
of its own division and
duplication,
acquiring,
in
the
process,
the
ability
to
separate
itself
from
itself.
The self that views itself has a
sharp
awareness
of the fact that what
it sees
beyond
the material screen
is
indeed
itself
or,
in
any
case,
a
reflec-
tion
of
itself.
This
power
can be called the
power
of reflection.
The same self
can,
after
the act of
looking
at
itself,
remember more
or less
clearly
its own
reflection
or shadow.
The
power
of the shadow
originates
from
the
possibility
of
escaping
the
constraints that structure perceptible and sensory reality, notably the sense
of
touch.
One can see
in
the
mirror,
but cannot touch what
is
seen.
For the
double
that
is
relayed
by
the mirror is a
fleeting,
fictive
double.
One can
only
touch
oneself
And it is this
touching
oneself
that is
reflected
in
the mirror
and which is
returned to us
through
the mirror.
And what the
mirror
sends
back
to
us
is,
to a
large
extent,
untouchable.
The divorce between
seeing
and
touching,
the flirtation between
touch-
ing
and the
untouchable,
the
duality
between
that which reflects and
that
which
is
reflected
is based
on
the double
principle
of
immateriality
and
unreality,
or,
more
precisely,
on the
spectralization
of
reality.
In
the
mirror,
being
and
identity
are
fugitive,
intangible,
but visible;
they
constitute that
negative
space
which is the
gap
between the
land its shadow. The other law
is that
of
luminosity.
There
is,
in
fact,
no reflection
in
the mirror without
a
certain
distribution of
things
in
proximity
and
distance,
a certain
manner
of
playing light against
darkness,
and
vice versa. Without such
interplay,
there can
be no manifestation of the double.
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Achille Mbembe 5
The
other
property
of the mirror is
what
could
be
called
its
power of
terror.
This
power
is born
of the
disquieting
reality
brought
into
being by
this
place
that
is
not
a
place
for
it
does not rest
upon
any
terrain.
Where,
indeed,
are the
image
and
the self thus
imaged by
the
mirror
situated? What
terrain,
what
ground
supports
them? Sabine
Melchior-Bonnet
provides
this
answer:
The self
is both there and
elsewhere,
perceived
in a
troubling
ubiquity
and
depth,
at
an uncertain distance: we
see
in
a
mirror,
or rather
the
image
seems
to
appear
behind
the
material
screen,
so
that
the
one
who sees himself can
question
whether he sees
the surface itself or across
it,
and
adds,
The
reflection
causes
the
sensation
of an
immaterial under-
world to rise
up
beyond
the mirror
and invites
the
gaze
to a cross-over of
appearances
(113-14).
Now
strictly
speaking,
the
crossing-over
of
appearances
can
be
associ-
ated with
a penetration
into
the
heart
of the psyche. Crossing through
appearances
is not
only
to
go beyond
the
split
between what one can
see,
what one can
touch,
and
what is
hidden,
invisible.
It also means
running
the
risk of
an
autonomy
of the
psychewith respect
to
corporeality, expropriation
of the
body going
hand-in-hand
with
the
unsettling possibility
of an
eman-
cipation
of the fictive double.
The
latter
acquires,
in
such a
setting,
a life
of
its
own,
a life
given
over
to the
dark
work of the
shadow-magic,
dream,
and
delirium
inherent to
any
confrontation
between
self
and self.
The third
property
of the mirror is the
power
offantasy
and
imagination.
That
such a
power
might
be
possible
resides
in
the
fact that
every play
of the
mirror rests-as discussed above-upon the constitution of a gap between
the self and its
representation,
a
space
of
breaking
and
entering
and of
dissonance
between
the
self and its fictive double
reflected in the mirror.
Because the self and
its
reflection are not
superposable,
duplication
can
never
be
easy.
Dissemblance and
duplicity
are thus
an
integral part
of the
relationship
with
the
mirror,
that
is,
in
the
long
run,
in
the confrontation
between
self and self.
Delirium
Let us
break the mirror
on
Tutuola's
writing.
What do
we see? The
spectacle
of a
world
in
motion,
ever
reborn,
made of fold
upon
fold,
of
landscapes
and
topographies,
figures,
circles,
spirals
and
fractures, colors,
sounds,
and
noises.
A
world of
images,
one could
say.
But above
all,
a
world
inhabited
by
beings
and
things
that
pass
for what
they
are
not.
More than
a
geographi-
cal
space,
the
ghostly
realm is foremost a field
of
visions:
fantasies,
strange
spaces,
masks,
surprises,
and
astonishment;
in
short,
permanent
commerce
with families of
signs
that
intersect, contradict,
and
nullify
one
another,
set
themselves back
in
motion,
and
go
astray
within
their own boundaries. Per-
haps that is the reason the ghostly realm escapes synthesis and geometry:
[T]here
were
many
images
and our own
too
were
in
the centre of
the hall. But our own
images
that we saw there resembled us too
much and
were
also white
colour,
but we were
very surprised
to
meet our
images
there
[.
.
.].
So
we asked
from Faithful-Mother
what she was
doing
with
all
of
the
images.
She
replied
that
they
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6 Research
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were for remembrance and to
know
those
she
was
helping
from
their difficulties and
punishments.
(248-49)
A
world of hidden
knowledge,
no doubt.
But,
above
all,
as
will be
seen
later,
a world shaped by the remembrance of fragments of life, of the work that
is the
struggle
for life.
It
is also a world that one
experiences
and
that
one
creates,
in
instability,
in
evanescence,
in
excess,
in
that inexhaustible
depth
that
is
generalized
theatralization:
To
my surprise,
when
I
helped
the
lady
to
stand
up
from
the
frog
on
which she
sat,
the cowrie that
was
tied on
her
neck
made a
curious
noise at
once,
and
when
the Skull
who was
watching
her heard
the
noise,
he
woke
up
and blew
the
whistle to
the
rest,
then
the
whole
of them rushed to the place and surrounded the lady and me, but
at the same time that
they
saw me
there,
one of
them
ran to
a
pit
which was not so
far
from that
spot,
the
pit
was
filled with cowries.
He
picked
one cowrie out of
the
pit,
after that he
was
running
towards
me,
and
the whole crowd wanted
to tie
the
cowrie on
my
neck
too.
But
before
they
could do
that,
I had
changed
myself
into
air
[.
.
.].
(210)
We
penetrate
into the
ghostly
realm
through
its
border,
across
the
edges.
From
this
perspective,
the
ghostly sphere
is
a
lateral
space.
But it
positions
itself
equally
as a decor.
It
is found
not
at the
periphery
of life
but
on
its
edges.
It
constantly
spills
out over
its
assigned
time
and
space.
It
is a
scene where events
continually
take
place
that
never
seem to
congeal
to the
point
of
consolidating
into
history.
Life unfolds in
the
manner of
a
spectacle
where
past
and future are reversed.
Everything
takes
place
in
an
indefinite
present.
Before and after
are
abolished,
memory
is
destabilized,
and
multiplication
reigns.
There
is
no life but
a
life that
is
fractured
and
mutilated:
[A]ll
the
hero-ghosts
who
were
fighting
the enemies
with us
were
killed
and
also
many
of the
heads
were cut
away
from their mother's
body
[.. .]. After we won the war the whole of us were
gladly
march-
ing
to
the town. But as the Invisible and Invincible Pawn woke
up
all the dead soldiers and
replaced
their
heads
which
were
cut off
by
the
enemies to their
necks
and as
my
own was cut
off as
well,
so
he
mistakenly put
a
ghost's
head on
my
neck instead
of mine
[
..]
so
this
head
was
always
making
various
noises
both
day
and
night
and
also
smelling badly.
Whether
I
was
talking
or not
it
would be
talking
out the words which
I
did not mean
in
my
mind and
was
telling
out all
my
secret aims which
I
was
planning
in mind whether
to
escape
from there
to
another town
or
to start
to find
the
way
to
my
home town
[...].
(108-09)
The remembrance of the mutilated
organ responds,
as
if in
echo,
to
the
violence
of
decapitation:
the head-the visible seat of
identity-passes
into the void. It has fallen under the
enemy's
blow. Mutilation does
not
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7
translate
here as an
open
wound.
Another
bodily
structure
and another
organization
of the sensorial
apparatus
are added
on
to the
trunk of the
body.
The
head continues to
speak,
but in a
disorderly
manner.
Every
notion
of the
secret
and of
privacy
is
abolished.
The
subject
lives with a
sense
of
being
perpetually spied upon.
Thejoining
of one's own
body
to a
head that
belongs
to
someone
else renders the self
a locus
of
uncontrollable
speech.
Words are
spoken
in
place
of a self
that does
not
recognize
the statements
uttered as
its own. Both the
body
and the
self are
enslaved
to the
conditions
of
the
symbol.
Sent back
across
the
edge,
the self is
projected
into a
moving
horizon,
at
the core of
a
reality
whose center is
everywhere
and
nowhere. Events do
not
necessarily
have
recognizable
origins.
Some
are
pure
memory-filters.
Others
crop up
unexpectedly,
without
apparent
cause,
or have a
beginning
but
not
necessarily an end. Still others are stopped, then taken up again at a
later
time,
and not
necessarily by
the
same
actors,
in an
indefinite
declension
of
profiles
and
figures
that
are
as
ungraspable
as
they
are
unrepresentable,
and
through designs
that are
as
complicated
as
they
are
ever liable
to modi-
fication. The
causes-never
univocal-entwine,
dis-entwine and
entwine
anew,
willed into
action
by
forces
over which
they
have no
control.
One does
not enter into the
ghostly
realm out
of
curiosity
or
because
one
wants to.
Ultimately,
a
tragedy,
indeed a
loss,
is at the
origin
of
every-
thing.
The
fracture that ensues
derives from the self's
inability
to
control
its
desires and to
bear the
loss-the absence of
enjoyment
previously
associ-
ated with the fulfillment of desire:
I
was a
palm-wine
drunkard
since I
was a
boy
of ten
years
of
age.
I
had no
other work more than
to drink
palm-wine
in
my
life.
[...]
[W]
hen
my
father
noticed that
I
could
not do
any
work
more
than to
drink,
he
engaged
an
expert palm-wine tapster
for
me;
he
had no
other work than to
tap palm-wine
every day.
[...]
So
my
friends were
uncountable
by
that time
and
they
were
drinking palm-wine
with me from
morning
till a late
hour
in
the
night.
[
...]
when it was the
6t month
after
my
father had
died,
the
tapster
went
to
the
palm-tree
farm
on a
Sunday evening
to
tap
palm-wine
for
me.
When
he
reached the
farm,
he
climbed one of
the
tallest
palm-trees
in
the farm
to
tap palm-wine
but as he
was
tapping
on,
he
fell down
unexpectedly
and died at the
foot of
the
palm-tree
as a
result
of
injuries.
(191-92)
Prior to the
split,
the
subject's
life was
centered around a
fixed
object
of desire.
The
effective realization of
pleasure
resulted almost
exclusively
from
tapping
(literally
and
otherwise)
an
inexhaustible
flux,
the
encoun-
ter with the
single
object
that
could
satisfy
his
urge:
palm-wine.
Once the
pleasure
was
achieved,
the
subject
could
then attain a relative
state of
satiety
and happiness, a certain sensual
delight.
In this
exchange,
the
palm-wine
tapster
represented
the
living
mediation
without which there would
be no
satisfaction.
The
brutal and
premature
death of
the
wine-gatherer
is
in
many
regards
a fantastical
castration: the
coupling
of seminal
liquid
and narcis-
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Achille
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tion of roads and
I
was
doubtful when I
reached
thejunction,
I did
not
know
which
was
Death's road
among
these roads
[.
.
.]
it was
the
market
day
[.
.
.]
I lied
down on the
middle of
the
roads,
I
put
my
head to
one
of the
roads,
my
left hand to
one,
right
hand to
another
one,
and
my
both feet to
the
rest,
after
that
I
pretended
as
I
had
slept
there.
(195)
Thus are
the
crossroads.
They
open,
unbeknownst
to
us,
onto the
ghostly
domain. We enter into
it almost
unwittingly,
because it has no vis-
ible
border.
The
crossroads
constitute,
in this
regard,
more than
a
simple
point
of
passage.
They
are
the
gate
that
opens
onto the
process
of
unwind-
ing.
The
unwinding
centers
its attack on
the senses: the
visual,
the
tactile,
the
auditory,
the
olfactory.
We do not
penetrate
the
ghostly
theater
without
a
certain
bodily struggle.
The
head,
the
hands,
and the
feet
are set
there
like inert traps in a game of chance in which there are many unwitting
participants, including
passers-by:
But
when all
the
market
goers
were
returning
from the
market,
they
saw me
lied
down
there and
shouted
thus:- Who was
the
mother
of this
fine
boy,
he
slept
on the
roads and
put
his head
towards
Death's
road.
(195)
Knowledge
of the
path
that leads to
the
ghost
world
is
yielded
by pass-
ers-by.
The
body,
the
road,
and the market
goers
all come
together
with
sleep
to mimic death itself in
order to better
discover
its
paths.
The
ghost
world is thus one of roads and
crossroads,
of simulation and resemblance.
The
crossroads are also the site of
strange
ceremonies:
At last
I
found
myself
where
several roads meet
together
[...],
but
all
these roads
were
foot
paths.
[.
.
.]
It was an
open
place, except
the bush
which
spread
on
it.
There
I
remained till the
morning
without
seeing
a
single
creature.
(69)
[I]
t was about
eight
o'clock
in
the
morning
all the
ghosts
and
ghostesses
with their
children of that
town came to me with
two
sheep
and two
goats
and also with some
fowls.
Having
reached there
the first thing they did was that the whole of them surrounded me,
then all
were
singing,
beating
drums,
clapping
hands,
ringing
bells
and
dancing
round me for
a few
minutes before
they
killed
all the
domestic animals which
they
brought
before me and
poured
the
blood
of these animals on
to
my
head
which ran to the
long
neck
and
then into
the
pitcher
in
which the
rest
of
my body
was.
(69)
In
this
nameless,
early
morning
ceremony,
the hole takes the
place
of
the
gallows.
There is no
high
priest.
The
crowd,
in
its
abstraction,
presides
over the
ritual and
performs
the sacrifice.
The victim's
face
is
obliterated at
the expense of his head and its natural extension, the neck. The remainder
of the
body,
already
buried,
is
nothing
but
an
unnamable
magma.
Here, ghostly
terror finds its
expression
in the
combined forces of
song,
dance,
and immolation. In
this
linkage
resides its
spiralaspect,
its
singular
violence,
its
effects
of
terror.
The
uniqueness
of
ghostly power
is its
encircl-
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10 Research
in
AfricanLiteratures
ing
of
the
subject,
surrounding
it
on all
sides,
investing
it and
tightening
around
it to the
point
that it cracks.
From this
perspective,
ghostly
terror
is
above all
physico-anatomical,
deriving
in
large part
from the characteristic
deformity
of the
ghost's body:
[M]
any
of
them had no hands
and some had
no
fingers,
some had
no
feet
and
arms
butjumped
instead of
walking.
Some had heads
without
eyes
and
ears,
but
I
was
very surprised
to see them
walking
about
both
day
and
night
without
missing
their
way
and also
it
was
this
day
I
had ever
seen
ghosts
without
clothes on their
bodies and
they
were
not ashamed of their nakedness.
(27)
Half-bodies
that
are cut
every
which
way,
made
incomplete
through
mutilation
and the
resulting
absence
of
symmetry,
but nevertheless
enjoying
magnified acuity
and
force,
and
capable
of
limping along:
such
is the
genius
of these monsters and
the source of their
power
(see
de Heusch
125-55).
The victim of
ghostly
terror
is
not sheltered
from
this
symbolic
of
asymme-
try.
Where
ghostly power
undertakes
to model its
victim's bodies
in its own
image,
terror
can
easily
be
transformed
into
a
demiurgic
surgery-crippled
bodies,
lost
parts,
scattered
fragments,
misshapings
and
wounds,
the libidi-
nal
dance of
hopeless
wars,
in
short,
generalized
dismemberment:
[T]
here were
many
kinds of African wars
and some
of them are
as
follows:
general
wars,
tribal
wars,
burglary
wars
and the slave wars
which were
very
common
in
every
town
and
village
and
particularly
in famous markets and on main roads of
big
towns at
any
time in
the
day
or
night.
(17-18)
Everyone
was
fleeing,
the
living,
the
dead,
the
next-to-dead,
the
ain't-gonna-make-it,
those who
were
whole,
those who
were
halves,
members,
bits,
that the blasts continued
to
pursue.
(Sony
Labou
Tansi,
La
vie
et
demie
40-41).
There
is another face of
ghostly
terror that ensues
from the
ghost's
ugli-
ness and
wretchedness.
Indeed,
the
ghost's body
teems with
a
multiplicity
of
living species: bees, mosquitoes, snakes, centipedes, scorpions, flies. From
it emanates
a
pestilential
odor
fed
by
never-ending
feces, urine,
blood-in
short,
the waste
of victims that
ghostly power
endlessly
crushes:
All kinds of
snakes,
centipedes
and flies were
living
on
every part
of
his
body.
Bees,
wasps
and uncountable
mosquitoes
were also
flying
round him and it was hard
to
see
him
plainly
because
of these
flies
and insects.
[ ...]
all
his
body
was
full
of
excreta, urine,
and also wet
with the rotten
blood of
all
the animals
that
he
was
killing
for his
food. His
mouth
which was
always
opening,
his nose and
eyes
were
very hard to look at as they were very dirty and smelling. (29)
Together,
the violence
of
deformity
and
the violence
of
ugliness
allow
ghostly power
to
acquire
this
ability
to double
and to divide into a
multi-
plicity
of
opposites
which,
to
paraphrase
Nietzsche,
in
the
end make
of it a
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11
reality
that ceases
its
becoming
at one
moment,
and then an
instant
later,
is
returned to its
nothingness.
Ghostly
violence
is
deployed
under
diverse
shapes.
At
the base
of
all
these
figures
there is
nevertheless a
common
principle:
the
desire
to
murder:
To
my
surprise
was that when it
was about two o'clock
in
the mid-
night,
there
I
saw
somebody
enter into
the room
cautiously
with a
heavy
club
in
his
hands,
he
came
nearer to the bed on
which he
had told
me to
sleep,
then
he clubbed
the bed
with all
his
power,
he
clubbed
the centre
of
the bed
thrice and he returned
cautiously,
he
thought
that I
slept
on
that
bed and he
thought
also that
he had
killed me.
(198)
Incidentally,
in
the
ghostly realm, life and murder are one and the same
thing. Ghostly
terror
operates
also
through capture.
This too
assumes
diverse
forms.
The most
ordinary
of
these is
physical
capture.
It
consists
simply
in
binding
the
subject
hand
and
foot and
gagging
him like a
convict,
beyond
the
bearable,
to the
point
where he is
reduced to
immobility.
From then
on
he can
neither
run,
nor even
move.
He can
barely
stir: the
spectator
of
his
own
powerlessness.
Other forms
of
capture
occur
through
the
projection
of a
light
whose
starkness,
harshness,
and
brutality
invest
objects,
erase
them,
recreate
them,
and
then
plunge
the
subject
into
a
quasi-hallucinatory
drama:
So as he
lighted
the flood of
golden
light
on
my
body
and when I
looked
at
myself
I
thought
that I
became
gold
as it was
shining
on
my body,
so at
this
time I
preferred
most to
go
to
him
because of his
golden
light.
But as
I
moved forward
a little bit
to
go
to him
then
the
copperish-ghost lighted
the
flood
of
his own
copperish light
on
my
body
too,
which
persuaded
me
again
to
go
to the
golden-ghost
as
my
body
was
changing
to
every
colour that
copper
has,
and
my
body
was then
so
bright
so that I
was unable
to touch
it.
And
again
as
I
preferred
this
copperish
light
more than the
golden-light
then
I
started to
go
to
him,
but at this
stage
I
was
prevented again
to
go
to him
by
the
silverfish-light
which
shone on
to
my
body
at that
moment
unexpectedly.
This
silverfish-light
was
as
bright
as
snow
so
that it
transparented
every part
of
my body
and
it
was this
day
I
knew the number
of bones of
my
body.
But
immediately
I
started
to
count
them these
three
ghosts
shone the three kinds of
light
on
my
body
at
the same time in
such a
way
that
I
could not
move to and
fro
because of
these
lights.
But
as these
three old
ghosts
shone
their
lights
on me
at the same time
so
I
began
to
move round as a
wheel
at
thisjunction,
as
I
appreciated
these
lights
as
the same.
(24-25)
The
light
reflects its brilliance and its radiance on the
body
that has
become,
under
the
circumstances,
a luminous
dust,
a
porous
and translu-
cent matter. This
fluidification of
the
body
results
in the
suspension
of its
prehensile
and motor
functions. Its
component parts
become
legible.
The
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Achille
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lose the
memory
of their chains.
They
discard
their habitual
gestures,
liber-
ating
themselves
from
their
bodies,
so to
speak,
in
order
to
better
prolong,
through
a
multiplicity
of
intermingled
lines,
the creation of
the
world:
[W]hen Drum started to beat himself, all the people who had
been dead for hundreds
of
years,
rose
up
and
came
to
witness
Drum
when
beating;
and when
Song
began
to
sing
all
domes-
tic animals
of that new
town,
bush
animals with
snakes
etc.,
came
out
to
see
Song
personally,
but when
Dance
[.
.
.]
started
to
dance
the whole bush
creatures,
spirits,
mountain creatures
and
also all the
river
creatures
came to the town
to see who
was
danc-
ing.
When
these
three
fellows started at
the same
time,
the
whole
people
of the new
town,
the
whole
people
that
rose
up
from the
grave,
animals,
snakes,
spirits
and
other
nameless
creatures,
were
dancing together
with these three fellows and it was that day that
I
saw
that snakes were
dancing
more than
human-beings
or
other
creatures.
(263-64)
The
space
thus created
by
song,
dance,
and the
drum is that of
generalized
spectacle.
All of
the
energy imprisoned
in
the
bodies,
beneath
the
earth,
in
the
streams,
on the
mountains,
in the animal
and
vegetal
world,
is
sud-
denly
liberated,
and
none of
these entities
retains an identifiable
equivalent
or
referent.
In
fact,
they
are
no
longer
referents
of
anything
at all.
They
are
nothing
more
than
their
own inherent
totality.
The
dead,
the
spur
of
dance, the beat of the drum, and the ritual of resurrection dissolve into an
ambivalence
and
general dispersion
of all
things imaginable,
as
if
suddenly
let loose at
random: a telluric
sequence,
indeed,
through
which
that which
was
buried
has
been
jolted
out
of
sleep.
There
is also noise.
Ghostly
violence
consists
equally
in
an art
of
making
noise. That noise
is
not
gratuitous.
It is almost
always
linked
to
specific
operations
of control and surveillance:
I
noticed
carefully
at this
stage
that
if
they
are
breathing
in I would
hear the
cry
of
frogs,
toads,
pigs'
cry,
the
crowing
of
cocks,
the
noises
of
birds and as
if uncountable
dogs
are
barking
at the
same
time
[...
.] (66).
[T]he
cowrie
that was
tied
on her
neck made
a
curious
noise
at
once,
and when
the Skull
who was
watching
her
heard
the
noise,
he
woke
up
and blew the whistle to
the
rest,
then
the whole
of
them
rushed
to the
place
and surrounded
the
lady
and me
[.. .].
(210)
One noise
almost
always
calls
forth
another, which,
in
turn,
generally
gives
rein to
a crowd
movement.
Noise can reach
such a
pitch
that its
immediate
consequence
is
deafness:
[A]ll
these heads were
making
various
fearful
noises
with
louder
voices
along
the
way,
even the rest of us could
not hear
any
other
creatures' voices
except
their
own
which
nearly
made us become
deaf
(108).
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8/20/2019 Life and Sovereignity Achille Mbembe
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14
Research
in
African
Literatures
The
Order of
Caprice
Ghostly
violence is
also of a
capricious
nature.
Caprice
here is
primarily
an
exercise in the arbitrary. It involves two distinct possibilities. The first is
laughing
at the
subjects'
misfortune:
After she
[Flash-eyed
Mother]
heard
[.
.
.]
from
them
[the
short
ghosts],
then she
flashed
the
fire of
both
her
eyes
on
my body,
and
it burnt
the animal skin which
I
wore as
a
cloth
and also burnt some
part
of
my body
as well at the same
time
[ ...]
but
as
my body caught
fire and
I
cried
suddenly
with a
loud
voice,
so
when
they
heard
my
sorrowful
voice
the
whole
of
them
burst into
a
great laugh
at a
time as
if
uncountable cannons
fired
together,
and her
own
laugh
among
the rest
wasjust
as
if
a bomb
explodes. (100)
The second is
overturning
everything, associating
every
single thing
with
many
others that do
not
necessarily
resemble
it,
all
capable
of
leading
to
totally unpredictable consequences. Caprice
consists,
as
well,
in
dissolv-
ing
the
identity
of each
thing
within
an
infinity
of
identities and
forms with
no
direct
link
to
their
origins. Ghostly
terror,
from
this
perspective,
is
based
on
the
negation
of
all
essential
singularity:
In
the
presence
of
these
guests,
my
boss
was
changing
me to
some
kinds of creatures. First of all he
changed
me
to
a
monkey,
then I
began to climb fruit trees and pluck fruits down for them. After
that
he
changed
me to
a
lion,
then
to a
horse,
to a
camel,
to a
cow
or bull with
horns on
its head
and at last to
my
former
form.
(36)
Ghostly
power presents
itself,
finally,
as
an
art of
savoring
the intoxication
of life:
After all of
them had
eaten and
drunk to their
entire satisfaction
then
they
were
dancing
the
ghost's
dance
round
me
and
beating
drums,
clapping
hands on me and
singing
the
song
of
ghosts
with
gladness
until
a
late
hour
in
the
night
before
every
one of
them
who
came from various provinces [...] returned to his or her province
[...].
(36-37)
In the
economy
of
ghostly
violence,
the
only
valid
archive is
therefore
the one that
brings everything
back
to
the
moment.
No one here is con-
demned
to
scream,
except
the
convict.
No
face
is
disfigured
except
his
own.
Nevertheless,
once
the
ceremony
is
over,
the
convict
is
immediately
returned to his
original
form.
The
ghosts
drink,
they
eat,
and
they
dance
around a
captive
who has been decked
out,
for the
occasion,
in a
garb
of
doubly
erotic and sadistic value.
Later,
the
convict is transformed into a horse that is mounted
and
ridden,
as
if
he
were
being
raped:
[T]hen
he
put
reins into
my
mouth and
tied
me on a
stump
with
a thick
rope,
after this he went back to the house and dressed
in
a
big
cloth which was
made
with a kind of
ghosts'
[.
.
.].
After a while
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8/20/2019 Life and Sovereignity Achille Mbembe
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Achille Mbembe
15
he
came out with two
of his attendants
who
were
following
him
to
wherever
he wanted
to
go.
Then the
attendants loosened
me
from
the
stump,
so
he mounted me
and
the two attendants
were
following
him
with
whips
in their hands and
flogging
me
along
in
the
bush.
(37)
[A]s
I
was tied in the
sun all the
young ghosts
of this
village
were
mounting
me and
getting
down as
if I am
a tree as
they
were
very
surprised
to see
me
as
a horse.
(39)
[H]e
mounted
me and
the two attendants
were
following
him with
whips
in their hands
and
flogging
me
along
in the bush
[...]
a
fearful
ghost
[.
.
.]
brought
horse's food
[...]
I ate the corn
[...]
another terrible ghost [...
.]
brought urine [...] I tasted it as I was
exceedingly
feeling
thirsty
[...].
(37-39)
Ghostly power
harasses
the
subject,
screams,
beats him
mercilessly,
starves
him
for an
instant,
and then in the
next instant
forces him
to eat
exactly
as one feeds an
animal,
and makes
him drink
his own urine.
The Price of
the Slave
When
he does not
kill his
prey,
the
ghostly
power
seeks to
dismember
him- he told
them that
he would cut me
into
three
parts
and
give
each
part
to each of them so that there would be no more
misunderstanding
(30)
-or
failing
that,
sell
him:
[H]e
chained
me to a tree
together
with the other slaves
that
we
met
there,
all of us were
in
a
straight
line.
But within four
hours
all
the
rest slaves had been
sold and
nobody buys
me because of
the
sores.
When he waited
with
me till about two
o'clock
and
when
he
believed
that no one could
buy
me that
market
day,
then he
was
loosening
the chain from
me,
and when
he
was about to return
to
his town
a rich
man came
to the
market,
he
looked round but
saw
no more slaves except me, because he kept late, then he came to my
boss.
He
priced
me
very
poor
and
my
boss
agreed,
he told
him to
pay
any
amount that
he likes to
buy
me,
but
when
he stood before
me and
looked
at me for
many
hours he said
- I
cannot
buy
sores
for
my
town. Then
he went
back to his town.
But as
nobody buys
me and
I
remained
unsold,
so
my
boss was
flogging
me
repeatedly
along
the
way
back to
his town.
(168)
This exercise
is carried out
over
several weeks.
The master
attempts
to
sell the slave
but can
find
no
buyer.
At that
point
he
maps
out a
plan
by
himself:
If I take
you
to the market
once
more
and
if
nobody buys you
on
that
market
day
as well so
if I
am
returning
from
the
market to the
town
I will
kill
you
on the
way
and
throw
away
your body
into
the
bush,
because
you
are
entirely
useless for
any
purpose,
even I have
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8/20/2019 Life and Sovereignity Achille Mbembe
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16 Research
in
AfricanLiteratures
told
several
of
my
friends to take
you
free of
charge
but none
of
them
accepts
the offer
[...].
(168)
Unfinished
business,
indeed. The
relationship
between the seller
(the
master) and the individual to be sold (the slave) is not one of filiation.
The master is
not
violating
the slave because
as
such,
the slave is not a
legal
human
subject.
The owner of
a
property simply
seeks to
part
with
his
prop-
erty.
But the
commodity
put
up
for
sale is
repulsive
in
the
eyes
of
potential
buyers. Consequently,
the master lowers
the
price
to the
point
of
its becom-
ing
a
fictive
price.
By
encouraging
the rich man to
make
any
offer
for
the
slave,
the
master
gives up
selling
at
a
high price
what he
purchased
for
little-or
really,
for
nothing
at
all. He
wants to
unload at a
cheap price-at
any price.
Value
is abolished. Terror and
cruelty
have
replaced
the desire to
sell.
Another,
more terrible
law, murder,
is
superimposed upon
an
act
that
is just as violent: the act of sale. Unsold, yet killed, the body emerges from
the
register
of
merchandise and
property.
The
Body
and
the
Burden
of Life
In Tutuola's
universe,
the self
appears
not as
an
entity,
created once and
for
all,
but as
a
subject
au
travail,
in the
making.
Work itself
is a
permanent
activity.
Life is sketched out
through
successive
shapes
that constitute
just
as
many
lived
experiences.
It flows
forth
like
the tide.
In
the work
for
life
(le
travailpour
la
vie)
are
mobilized
several
registers
of
action. One
of
these
registers consists in trapping the other, as the bearer of danger or death:
[..
.]
I
stopped
and
dug
a
pitt
of
his
(Death's)
size
on the
centre
of
that
road,
after that
I
spread
the net which
the old man
gave
me to
bring
him
(Death)
with on
that
pit
[.
..].
When
it was
6
o'clock
in
the
morning,
I went to
his
door
and
woke
him
up
as
usual,
then I
told
him that
I
wanted to return to
my
town
this
morning,
so
that
I
wanted
him to lead
me
a
short
distance;
then
he
got up
from
his
bed and he
began
to
lead me as
I
told
him,
but
when he
led me
to
that
place
that
I
had
dug,
I
told
him
to
sit
down,
so
I
myself
sat down on the road
side,
but
as he
sat
down
on
the
net,
he fell into the
pit,
and without
any
ado I rolled
up
the net with
him
and
put
him
on
my
head
and I
kept going
to the old man's house
who told
me to
go
and
bring
him
Death.
(198)
Work
for life
thus consists in
capturing
death and
exchanging
it for some-
thing
else.
From
this
point
of
view,
the
currency
of life is death.
Death
is
both
the value
of
exchange
and
the means
of
exchange. Capture requires
having
recourse to
subterfuge.
The
objective,
each
time,
is
to
immobilize
the
other
by
enticing
his
body
into one's snares.
Central to the work
for
life is,
obviously,
the
body,
to which several
prop-
erties can be attributed. The
body,
as
such,
is
not endowed with
any
intrinsic
meaning. Strictly speaking,
in the drama of
life,
the
body
signifies
nothing
in
itself.
It is an
interlacing,
or even a bundle of
processes
that
in and of
themselves have no immanent or
primordial
meaning.
Thus,
there is an ele-
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Achille
Mbembe
17
ment of
thing-ness
in
every corporeality
(notwithstanding
Merleau-Ponty
in
Phenomenologie
231).
The work
for
life
also consists
in
sparing
the
body
from
degeneration
into absolute
thing-ness.
A
mode
of
existence that renders this
possible
is
dissimulation,
a
manner
of
groping along
on the back of
things
and
playing
out the
comedy
before oneself and others.
As an anatomical
reality,
the
body
in
Tutuola's
fiction is also an assem-
blage
of
organs,
each
with a
specific
function.
As
such,
it
is not the seat of
any
such
singularity
that
one
could state once and
for all and
absolutely:
I
possess my body.
I
can,
in
fact,
hire out
parts
of
my body
to
others:
As
they
were
traveling along
in
this endless
forest then the
com-
plete gentleman
in the market that the
lady
was
following,
began
to
return the
hired
parts
of
his
body
to the owners
and he was
paying
them
the
rentage
money.
When he reached where
he hired the left
foot, he
pulled
it out, he
gave
it to the owner and
paid
him, and
they kept going;
when
they
reached the
place
where he hired
the
right
foot,
he
pulled
it out and
gave
it
to
the owner
and
paid
for
the
rentage.
Now both
feet had
returned
to the owners
[...].
(203)
The
ability
to
dissociate
oneself from one's own
body
is thus the
prereq-
uisite for all work
for
life.
Through
this
operation,
the
subject
can,
if
neces-
sary,
protect
his life
through
borrowed effect. He
can
feign
his
existence,
shed the
signs
of
servitude,
participate
in
the
masquerade
of the
gods,
or
even,
under the mask
of a
bull,
abscond with
virgins.
Indeed, the one who at one moment can dissociate himself from parts
of his
body
can,
at another
moment,
recover them as
soon
as the
exchange
is
completed.
This does
not mean that there are
parts
of
the
body
that
might
be considered
excess
baggage
and
can
be
squandered.
It
simply
means
that one
does not need
to have with
one,
at the same
time,
all
the
parts
of
one's
own
body.
Suddenly,
the
body's
primary
virtue
does not
reside
in
the
symbolic
extension of which it is the
seat,
but rather
in its
constitution as a
privileged
zone of the
expression
of
the senses.
The
body
resides
in the
potentialities
of
its
organs
taken as a whole or
separately,
in
the
reversibility
and
exchangeability
of
its
pieces,
their mort-
gaging, and their restitution by payment. In the ghostly economy, the body
is
alive
to
the extent that
its
organs
can be
instrumentalized
in
a
process
of
exchange
with
death. It
is
the
deployment
of the
organs,
their
malleability
and their more or less autonomous
power
that renders
the
body
alive.
The
Wandering
Subject
But there is no
body
except
in
and
through
movement.
That
is
why
there
is no
subject
but a
wandering
one.
The
wandering
subject
moves from
one
place
to another.
Journey
as such
does not need a
precise
destination: the
wanderer can
go
about as he
pleases.
There can be
predetermined
stages
for
thejourney.
But the
path
does not
always
lead to the
desired
destination.
What is
important
is where one ends
up,
the road traveled to
get
there,
the
series of
experiences
in which one is actor and
witness,
and above
all,
the
role
played by
the
unexpected
and the unforeseen.
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8/20/2019 Life and Sovereignity Achille Mbembe
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18
Research
in
African
Literatures
Along
with motor
functions,
work
Jor
lie
rests
upon
olfactory
functions.
These are
inseparable
from the
operation
of other
senses,
for instance
sight
and
taste. Such
is
notably
the case when
the
subject
experiences
hunger
or
thirst.
The
status of
odors and aromas is
nevertheless
complex; they
also
serve to
locate
the road
that could lead to
deliverance:
[A]
s
I
stood
at
the
junction
of
these
passages
with confusion
three
kinds of sweet smells were
rushing
out to me from
each
of these
three
rooms,
but
as
I
was
hungry
and also
starving
before I entered
into
this
hole,
so I
began
to sniff the
best smell so that
I
might
enter
the
right
room at once
from which the best
sweet smell was rush-
ing
out.
Of
course as
I
stood on
thisjunction
I
noticed
through my
nose that the smell which
was
rushing
out
of
the room which had
golden
surroundings
was
just
as if
the inhabitant of
it was
baking
bread and roasting fowl, and when I sniffed again the smell of the
room
which
had
copperish surroundings wasjust
as if the inhabit-
ant of it was
cooking
rice,
potatoes
and other
African food
with
very
sweet
soup
[...].
(23)
The other
ability
required
for
this work
for
life
is the
ability
to metamor-
phose.
The
subject
can
morph
under
any
circumstances. This is
notably
the
case in
situations
of
conflict and
adversity:
Having
left
this
village
to a
distance of a mile
this
ghost magician
came to
me on the
way,
he asked
me to let both of us
share the
gifts,
but when I refused he
changed
to a
poisonous
snake,
he wanted to
bite me
to
death,
so
I
myself
used
my
magical power
and
changed
to
a
long
stick
at the same
moment and started to
beat
him
repeatedly.
When he felt much
pain
and near to
die,
then
he
changed
from
the snake
to
a
great
fire and
burnt this stick to
ashes,
after that
he
started
to burn me too.
Without hesitation
I
myself
changed
to
rain,
so
I
quenched
him
at once.
Again
he controlled the
place
that
I
stood
to become
a
deep
well
in
which I
found
myself
unexpectedly
and without
any
ado he controlled this rain
to be
raining
into the
well while I
was
inside. Within a
second the well
was
full of
water.
But
when
he wanted
to close the door of
the well so that I
might
not be able to come out
again
or to die inside
it,
I
myself changed
to a
big
fish to swim out. But
at the same moment
he saw the fish
he
himself
changed
to a
crocodile,
he
jumped
into the well and came
to
swallow
me,
but
before he could
swallow me
I
changed
to a
bird
and
also
changed
the
gifts
to a
single palm
fruit,
I
held it
with
my
beak and
then
flew out of
the well
straight
to
the
18th town. Without
any
ado
he
changed
himself
again
to a
big
hawk
chasing
me about
in
the
sky
to
kill
as his
prey.
But
when
I
believed that
no doubt
he
would kill me very soon, then I changed again to the air and blew
within
a second
to a
distance
which
a
person
could not travel on
foot for
thirty years.
But when I
changed
to
my
former form at the
end of this
distance,
to
my surprise,
there I met him
already,
he
had reached
there
before me and was
waiting
for me a
long
time.
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8/20/2019 Life and Sovereignity Achille Mbembe
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Achille
Mbembe
19
Now we
appeared personally
to ourselves.
Then he asked me
to
bring
the
gifts,
but after
both of us
struggled
for
many
hours,
then
I
shared the
gifts
into two
parts,
I
gave
him
a
part,
but he insisted
to
take the whole.
However,
I
gave
him all.
(158-59)
The act
par
excellence
f
morphing
consists
in
constantly
exiting
out of
oneself,
going beyond
oneself
in
an
agonizing,
centripetal
movement
that
is
all the more
terrifying
as
the
possibility
of
returning
to
the
center
is never
assured.
In
this
context,
where
existence is tethered
to
very
few
things,
iden-
tity
can
only
live
its life in
a
fleeting
mode.
Inhabiting
a
particular
being
can
only
be
temporary.
It
is essential to know
how to
disguise
this
particu-
lar
being,
reproduce
it,
split
it,
retrieve
it as
necessary.
Not to be
ahead of
oneself
literally
means
running
the risk of
death.
The Cadaver
There
are
likewise
circumstances of
life in
the
course
of
which,
despite
an
insatiable desire to
exist,
the
living being
is condemned
to
take on
not its
individual and
singular
shape,
but the
identity
of
a dead
person:
He was
exceedingly glad
as
he
discovered
me as the dead
body
of
his
father,
then he took
me on his head and
kept going
to the town
at
once with
joy [...].
When he carried
me and
appeared
in
the town all his town's
ghosts asked him that what sort of heavy load he was carrying and
sweating
as if
he bathed
in
water like
this,
so he
replied
that it
was
the dead
body
of his
father
[ ...].
But
when
his
town's
ghosts
and
ghostesses
heard
so,
they
were
shouting
with
joy
and
following
him
to
his house.
Having
reached his house and
when
his
family
saw
me
[.. .]
they thought
that it was true
I
was
the dead
body
of
their
father,
so
they
performed
the
ceremony
which
is to be
performed
for
deads at once.
[...]
Then
they
told a
ghost
who is a
carpenter
among
them to
make
a
solid
coffin. Within an
hour he
brought
it,
but when
I
heard about
the coffin it was at that time I believed that they wanted to bury
me
alive,
then I
was
trying my
best to tell
them that
I
am not
his
dead
father,
but I
was
unable
to
talk at all
[...]
and
I was
unable
to
shake
my body
to show
them that I am still
alive
[.. .].
So after the
carpenter brought
the
coffin,
then
they put
me inside it
and
also
put
more
spiders
inside
it before
they
sealed
it at once
[.
.
.].
After
that
they dug
a
deep
hole as a
grave
in
the
back
yard
and buried
me there as a dead man.
(90-92)
The father is
thus dead
and
has not left behind
any
exact
replica
of him-
self. This void, created by the absence of this essential mark-the cadaver
of the
deceased-is
experienced
as an
immense
breach in
the
real. For
the mark
of the cadaver is an essential
component
of the
signifier
which
is death. Without this
mark,
the dead
person
and
his death are inscribed
in