Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T14:09:29.199Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Denunciation and liberty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2020

Louisa Lombard
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
Get access

Summary

Force itself is not as straightforward as it might at first appear. Stealth proved a communicative endeavour; Chapter 7 shows that force is too. What does force intend to communicate in the context of armed conservation and acquisitive politics? Who is the intended audience? What values underlie the actors’ moves? Pisteurs often use the idiom of vengeance to answer those questions, or that of why they pursue manhunts. But vengeance invites further exploration, too. It has often been thought of as a mode of law, a balancing mechanism. Vengeance, in the way in which pisteurs, hunters, and herders enact it, in contrast, is a means of communicating a claim to status. Who is not to be messed with? Who can be subjected to seizure or other insults? How does one respond if attacked? Recourse to vengeance is particularly valuable to people who do not have reliable access to institutional means of protection; it is a mode of denunciation, and a claim to sovereignty, oriented not towards control but towards liberty. Denunciation, like vengeance, is conversational – only in rare cases is it so definitive as to become a Parthian shot, and instead it often becomes a continuing cycle. Few are happy that denunciation is so prevalent, but many see their own denunciations as necessary. By denouncing, they claim an exception from violence that would demean but not include them, as well as from associated rules and norms, and as such it is a process of solidarity and claiming liberty.

Type
Chapter
Information
Hunting Game
Raiding Politics in the Central African Republic
, pp. 167 - 190
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×