The pot-king : the body and technologies of power
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The pot-king : the body and technologies of power
(African social studies series, v. 17)
Brill, 2007
- : [pbk]
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Note
Bibliography: p. [301]-309
Includes indexes
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The king of Mankon, in the western highlands of Cameroon, is an agricultural engineer by training, a businessman, and a prominent politician on the national stage. He partakes in the "return of the kings" in the forefront of an African public space. This book analyses the principles of the sacred kingship which lie at the core of the king's different roles. While showing that the king's body acts as a container of bodily substances transformed into unifying ancestral life-essence by appropriate means, and bestowed upon its subjects, it develops an innovative approach to bodily and material cultures as an essential component of the technologies of power. In so doing, it departs significantly from previous approaches to sacred kingship.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1. The human flesh
Chapter 2. The subjects as containers
Chapter 3. The skin-citizens
Chapter 4. "Smoke must be kept in inside the house"
Chapter 5. The gifts of the dead monarchs
Chapter 6. The closure of the country
Chapter 7. The king's three bodies
Chapter 8. The royal excrement
Chapter 9. Unbreakable vital piggy-banks
Chapter 10. De-sexualized bachelors
Chapter 11. Theoretical question in bodily/material cultures
by "Nielsen BookData"