A Nervous State: Violence, Remedies, and Reverie in Colonial Congo

by Nancy Rose Hunt

Overview

Nancy Rose Hunt tells the affective history of the convergence of biopolitics and colonial violence in the Belgian Congo. By showing how the shifts and interactions between the biopolitical state and the nervous state drove the colonial government's actions toward the Congolese, Hunt provides a new model for theorizing colonialism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822359654
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	01/08/2016
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	372
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.77(d)

About the Author

Nancy Rose Hunt is Professor of History at the University of Michigan, and the author of the prizewinning A Colonial Lexicon: Of Birth Ritual, Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo, also published by Duke University Press.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations  ix

Acknowledgments  xi

Introduction  1

1. Registers of Violence  27

2. Maria N'koi  61

3. Emergency Time  95

4. Shock Talk and Flywhisks  135

5. A Penal Colony, an Infertility Clinic  167

6. Motion  207

Conclusion. Field Coda and Other Endings  237

Notes  255

Bibliography  309

Index  343
 

What People are Saying About This

Megan Vaughan

"In this compelling account, Nancy Rose Hunt draws on an astonishing range of archival sources and her own interviews to move the history of the Belgian Congo beyond the externally driven 'catastrophe' narrative to something far more complex. Violence and death are still at the core here, but so are birth and healing and nervous laughter."
 

The Ground Between: Anthropologists Engage Philosophy - Veena Das

"With stunning insight, Nancy Rose Hunt makes a distinguished contribution to African history that goes a long way toward generating a critical understanding of colonial projects, their alignment with forms of early capitalism, and the brutal practices of extraction industries. By braiding these issues with the emergence of new healing cults, Hunt helps us to better understand the complex social process of colonialism. A Nervous State will greatly impact African studies, colonial history, and the anthropology of medicine and violence."
 

The Ground Between: Anthropologists Engage Philosophy - Veena Das

"With stunning insight, Nancy Rose Hunt makes a distinguished contribution to African history that goes a long way toward generating a critical understanding of colonial projects, their alignment with forms of early capitalism, and the brutal practices of extraction industries. By braiding these issues with the emergence of new healing cults, Hunt helps us to better understand the complex social process of colonialism. A Nervous State will greatly impact African studies, colonial history, and the anthropology of medicine and violence."
 

Editorial Reviews

"The interpretation in this splendid work is a decisive contribution to understanding the jumble of desires, interests, discourses and images in the colonial and post-colonial history of this country, as well as the psychic life of its history."--Roberto Beneduce "Journal of Asian and African Studies" (8/1/2017 12:00:00 AM)

"A Nervous State is an extraordinary book. Its empirical richness is obvious--the number and variety of different sources that Hunt has drawn upon, and the attention that she has paid to all these sources. Diaries and colonial archives, Lomongo language pamphlets and school essays, photographs, epic poems and dances--all of them receive the same, patient, highly sympathetic, but also questioning, persistent, and often quietly skeptical, scrutiny. Versions of events are presented, and new vistas open up, yet this is also a judicious book where the conclusions never push beyond what the evidence will support."--Joe Trapido "Somatosphere" (12/18/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"A Nervous State is certainly one of the most elegant books I have seen over the last years and an impressive attempt at entangling, and at discussing entangled, narratives. . . . This book is certainly 'a must' for everyone engaging with the history of communities under colonial rule, especially for Central Africa, but also beyond."--Alexander Keese "Social History" (7/1/2017 12:00:00 AM)

"A Nervous State provides a complex history of Colonial Congo; it is a huge contribution to African Studies and anthropology."--Charles Tshimanga "International Journal of African Historical Studies" (6/1/2017 12:00:00 AM)

"Hunt demonstrates how her use of interdisciplinary methods--archival, oral historical, literary, and ethnographic--and unconventional materials provides provocative insights into the colonial history of the Congo."--Elisha P. Renne "Journal of Interdisciplinary History" (11/17/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"Hunt provides a bricolage of archives, memories, and traces that is more than the sum of its parts. In so doing, she demonstrates in this deeply researched and assiduously analyzed work that the history of colonial Congo is much more than the haunted legacy of its violent inception."
--Matthew M. Heaton "American Historical Review" (6/1/2017 12:00:00 AM)

"In contrast to much popular work on the Congo, this book rejects using catastrophe and crisis as the main narratives to order Congolese history. Without denying the violence of Leopold II's regime and the Belgian colonial state, this study provides a much-needed sense of the diverse narratives of healing, anxiety, and opportunity that emerged in the decades following the end of the brutal reign of concessionary companies in the northwestern province of Equateur. . . . A Nervous State will take its place among the best works on African social and cultural history for years to come."--Jeremy Rich "Journal of Social History" (12/1/2017 12:00:00 AM)

"Nancy Rose Hunt's A Nervous State represents a pioneering work in African history, which will surely become a staple in advancing new frontiers for other narratives in the continent's history."--Ben Weiss "African Studies Review" (7/1/2018 12:00:00 AM)

"Nancy Rose Hunt's latest book beats, breathes, quivers and unsettles. Her writing brims with the curiosity and rigour that evidently fuels her meticulous tracing of neglected archival materials. Also palpable are the insight and sensitivity that enable her to encapsulate both the changing machinations of a biopolitical state, and the 'therapeutic insurgencies' of ordinary Congolese. However, it is Hunt's attention to sensation and to perception, what one might call her scholarly synaesthesia--her ability to read the archives with an attentive ear, to read 'dynamics of combat through acoustics of hushed silence and sadistic laughter, ' for example--that renders her work so compelling for an anthropologist of Equateur and of the senses."--Lys Alcayna-Stevens "Somatosphere" (12/18/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"The book's synthetic range, historical detail, and conceptual density...make it highly appropriate for graduate work, and essential in equatorial African studies....an exemplary venture in medical anthropology and a truly rich set of resources for those of us engaging such questions in our own thought and research."--David Eaton "Medical Anthropology Quarterly" (12/13/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"This is a book that is brimming with tensions: historiographical, epistemological, sensorial, emotional. It is alive with them, both in the material that Nancy Rose Hunt uncovers and in her manner of relaying her subject to the reader."--Richard C. Keller and Emer Lucey "Somatosphere" (12/18/2016 12:00:00 AM)

From the Publisher

"In this compelling account, Nancy Rose Hunt draws on an astonishing range of archival sources and her own interviews to move the history of the Belgian Congo beyond the externally driven 'catastrophe' narrative to something far more complex. Violence and death are still at the core here, but so are birth and healing and nervous laughter."
 

Megan Vaughan

"With stunning insight, Nancy Rose Hunt makes a distinguished contribution to African history that goes a long way toward generating a critical understanding of colonial projects, their alignment with forms of early capitalism, and the brutal practices of extraction industries. By braiding these issues with the emergence of new healing cults, Hunt helps us to better understand the complex social process of colonialism. A Nervous State will greatly impact African studies, colonial history, and the anthropology of medicine and violence."
 

The Ground Between: Anthropologists Engage Philosophy - Veena Das

Nancy Rose Hunt’s A Nervous State represents a pioneering work in African history, which will surely become a staple in advancing new frontiers for other narratives in the continent’s history.

African Studies Review - Ben Weiss

"In contrast to much popular work on the Congo, this book rejects using catastrophe and crisis as the main narratives to order Congolese history. Without denying the violence of Leopold II’s regime and the Belgian colonial state, this study provides a much-needed sense of the diverse narratives of healing, anxiety, and opportunity that emerged in the decades following the end of the brutal reign of concessionary companies in the northwestern province of Equateur.  . . . A Nervous State will take its place among the best works on African social and cultural history for years to come."

Journal of Social History - Jeremy Rich

"A Nervous State is an extraordinary book. Its empirical richness is obvious—the number and variety of different sources that Hunt has drawn upon, and the attention that she has paid to all these sources. Diaries and colonial archives, Lomongo language pamphlets and school essays, photographs, epic poems and dances—all of them receive the same, patient, highly sympathetic, but also questioning, persistent, and often quietly skeptical, scrutiny. Versions of events are presented, and new vistas open up, yet this is also a judicious book where the conclusions never push beyond what the evidence will support."

Somatosphere - Joe Trapido

"Hunt demonstrates how her use of interdisciplinary methods—archival, oral historical, literary, and ethnographic—and unconventional materials provides provocative insights into the colonial history of the Congo."

Journal of Interdisciplinary History - Elisha P. Renne

"The book’s synthetic range, historical detail, and conceptual density...make it highly appropriate for graduate work, and essential in equatorial African studies....an exemplary venture in medical anthropology and a truly rich set of resources for those of us engaging such questions in our own thought and research."

Medical Anthropology Quarterly - David Eaton

"This is a book that is brimming with tensions: historiographical, epistemological, sensorial, emotional. It is alive with them, both in the material that Nancy Rose Hunt uncovers and in her manner of relaying her subject to the reader."

Somatosphere - Richard C. Keller and Emer Lucey

"Nancy Rose Hunt’s latest book beats, breathes, quivers and unsettles. Her writing brims with the curiosity and rigour that evidently fuels her meticulous tracing of neglected archival materials. Also palpable are the insight and sensitivity that enable her to encapsulate both the changing machinations of a biopolitical state, and the ‘therapeutic insurgencies’ of ordinary Congolese. However, it is Hunt’s attention to sensation and to perception, what one might call her scholarly synaesthesia—her ability to read the archives with an attentive ear, to read ‘dynamics of combat through acoustics of hushed silence and sadistic laughter,' for example—that renders her work so compelling for an anthropologist of Equateur and of the senses."

Somatosphere - Lys Alcayna-Stevens

"A Nervous State is certainly one of the most elegant books I have seen over the last years and an impressive attempt at entangling, and at discussing entangled, narratives. . . . This book is certainly 'a must' for everyone engaging with the history of communities under colonial rule, especially for Central Africa, but also beyond."

Social History - Alexander Keese

"Hunt provides a bricolage of archives, memories, and traces that is more than the sum of its parts. In so doing, she demonstrates in this deeply researched and assiduously analyzed work that the history of colonial Congo is much more than the haunted legacy of its violent inception."
 

Matthew M. Heatonn Historical Review

"A Nervous State provides a complex history of Colonial Congo; it is a huge contribution to African Studies and anthropology."

International Journal of African Historical Studies - Charles Tshimanga

"The interpretation in this splendid work is a decisive contribution to understanding the jumble of desires, interests, discourses and images in the colonial and post-colonial history of this country, as well as the psychic life of its history."

Journal of Asian and African Studies - Roberto Beneduce

"Hunt provides a bricolage of archives, memories, and traces that is more than the sum of its parts. In so doing, she demonstrates in this deeply researched and assiduously analyzed work that the history of colonial Congo is much more than the haunted legacy of its violent inception."
 

American Historical Review - Matthew M. Heaton