Performing Power in Zimbabwe

Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-1-316-51586-0
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 155, 272 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 571 g

Reihe: African Studies

Focusing on political trials in Zimbabwe's Magistrates' Courts between 2000 and 2012, Susanne Verheul explores why the judiciary have remained a central site of contestation in post-independence Zimbabwe. Drawing on rich court observations and in-depth interviews, this book foregrounds law's potential to reproduce or transform social and political power through the narrative, material, and sensory dimensions of courtroom performances. Instead of viewing appeals to law as acts of resistance by marginalised orders for inclusion in dominant modes of rule, Susanne Verheul argues that it was not recognition by but of this formal, rule-bound ordering, and the form of citizenship it stood for, that was at stake in performative legal engagements. In this manner, law was much more than a mere instrument. Law was a site in which competing conceptions of political authority were given expression, and in which people's understandings of themselves as citizens were formed and performed.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Verheul, Susanne

Fachgebiete

• Rechtswissenschaften Recht, Rechtswissenschaft Allgemein Rechtsgeschichte, Recht der Antike
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Afrikanische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Law, state authority and the courts, 1. History, authority and the law in Zimbabwe, 1950–2002; 2. 'Rebels' and 'good boys': examining the working conditions in Zimbabwe's attorney general's office after 2000; 3. 'Zimbabweans are foolishly litigious': debating citizenship when engaging with a politicised legal system; 4. 'What is abnormal is normal': performative politics on the stages of arrest and detention; 5. Material and sensory courtrooms: observing the 'decline of professionalism' in Harare's magistrates'' courts; 6. The trials of the 'traitor in Harare's magistrates' courts under the unity government; 7. History, consciousness and citizenship in Matabeleland: the impact of the MLF case; 8. Historical narrative and political strategy in Bulawayo's magistrates' courts: the case of Owen Maseko; Conclusion: 'Government is a legal fiction' – performing law, the state, citizenship and politics.

Über Autor(innen)

Verheul, Susanne
Susanne Verheul is a Research Fellow in International Development at the University of Oxford where her research focuses on questions of law and politics in Southern Africa. She previously taught at University College Roosevelt, Utrecht University and holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford.