Personhood, Selfcraft and Kinaesthetic Regimes: Colonial Witchcraft and The Timeworn Death Wish

Abstract

Cosmologies form the palimpsestic bedrock of embodied Africana lifeworlds andhave continued to flourish within their own modernities despite the ongoing,echoing impacts of (neo-)colonialism and global anti-blackness. As such, onemight understand “being African” to necessarily consist—at least in part—ofongoing acts of resistance. Acts of continual, fluid, and intentional processes ofself-restoration, re-membering, and speculative refiguration that advances blackAfrikan personhood and lifeworlds, values, and aspirations. Colonialism andslavery were, at the level of implementation, kinaesthetic regimes. Sociopoliticalchoreographies achieved through violence, manipulation, coercion, exploitation,and destruction of bodies—an aesthetics of violence, if you will. Variousideological and physical apparatuses, aided by a cornucopia of maleficentinfrastructure, and technologies ensured that an internally consistent terrorformation was upheld.