From critique of the postcolony to a postcolonial form of critique. On the uses and misuses of foucault in jean and john comaroff’s work

Abstract

This paper develops a philosophical approach to Jean and John Comaroffs’ work by fleshing out and theoretically articulating the form of critique that the Comaroffs employ in their reading of the “postco-lonial” condition. Even though Walter Benjamin’s classical correlation between law and violence provides the framework for the kind of critique the Comaroffs perform, I want to show that when the question refers to what kind of critique they undertake in the context of the postcolony, as well as what form it needs to take in the specific context of the postcolonial world, it is the Comaroffs’ critical approaches to Michel Foucault rather than to Benjamin that become particularly illuminating.