Review essay of Jean and John Comaroff’s “Of Revelation and Revolution”

Elizabeth Elbourne, a historian of South Africa, begins the reviews by providing some potential critiques of the work of the Comaorffs as well as alerting readers both to its influence and to debates about it among Africanists. From a methodological point of view, she makes an historian’s appeal for attention to context and chronology, even while acknowledging the great utility for historians of the insights of historical anthropology. Her essay also addresses the debate among scholars of religion and colonialism about whether to see those targeted by missions primarily as agents who used Christianity and missionaries in various ways or primarily as victims of cultural colonialism. Elbourne thus helps us understand the diversity of possible approaches to the study of empire, the history of religion and colonialism, and the cross-regional utility of the Comaroffs’ approach to the history of missionary activity.

Sally Engle Merry, a legal anthropologist, continues the discussion by noting that the Comaroffs’ study of colonialism in South Africa has contributed to an expansion of the terrain for historical analysis and a retheorizing of culture as contested and changing. She explains that these important books contributed significantly to the 1990s development of a historical anthropology that examines culture as a fluid and porous phenomenon and that explores power through attention to representation and meaning. The books present an analysis of the making and unmaking of hegemony on the frontier of British imperialism that foregrounds the way cultural understandings and their materialization in dress, housing, labor arrangements, and land ownership instantiate and naturalize relations of power. As result, Merry concludes, the volumes represent a pathbreaking contribution to our understanding the role of hegemony in the making of social life under conditions of rapid and dramatic social transformation and sharp inequalities of power.

Greg Dening, a cultural critic who studies Oceania, concludes the review essay by musing about the analytical possibilities of the Comaroffs’ approach to historical anthropology. They tell us, he suggests, what historical anthropology might be: neomodern, processual, descriptive of hegemonic practices on both sides of a cultural boundary. Consequently, he explains, the Comaroffs’ analytical program provides a compelling way of linking present to past in colonial situations. Indeed, Dening argues that these volumes should be considered supportive documents for a new genre of historical analysis, “neomodern” history. He urges more historians to take up the mantle.