Divine detection: crime and the metaphysics of disorder. Jean Comaroff, John L. Comaroff, in Cahiers d'anthropologie sociale 2016/1 (N° 13): 94-116.

Abstract

Walter Benjamin famously insisted that modern police wielded a “ghostly,” all-pervasive violence, called upon at points where the state was unable to govern by legal means. Yet many African postcolonies are haunted by a different specter: the waning efficacy of enforcement, the ambiguity of authority, and the fear that the state in the immediate future will be incapable of knowing itself or recognizing its subjects. This paper examines the problematic relation of law, detection, and sovereignty in contemporary African polities, especially in post-apartheid South Africa. It focuses on the « metaphysics of disorder » that is palpable in popular culture here, and on the kinds of forensic fantasies it conjures in its wake.