Front cover image for Of revelation and revolution. Vol. 2, The dialectics of modernity on a South African frontier

Of revelation and revolution. Vol. 2, The dialectics of modernity on a South African frontier

Of Revelation and Revolution is at once a highly imaginative, richly detailed history of colonialism, Christianity, and consciousness in South Africa, and a theoretically challenging consideration of the most difficult questions posed by the nature of social experience. Although primarily concerned with the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Of Revelation and Revolution also looks forward to the age of apartheid and beyond. Of Revelation and Revolution is a study of the colonization of consciousness and the consciousness of colonization in South Africa. It traces the processes by which Non-conformist Christian missionaries, among the earliest foot soldiers of British colonialism, sought to change the hearts and minds, the signs and practices, of the Southern Tswana. As such, it is a historical anthropology of cultural confrontation--of domination and reaction, struggle and innovation. Its chronological span is approximately a century, between 1820 and 1920, although it is not written according to the strict demands of chronology. But it also casts its eye forward to the present, toward both everyday resistance and historical consciousness in apartheid South Africa. Similarly, while it focuses on a particular people--those made, in the nineteenth century, into an ethnic group called "the" Tswana--its compass extends to the predicament of black South Africans at large
Print Book, English, 1997
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1997
History
xxiii, 588 pages : illustrations, facsimiles, maps, 1 plan, portraits ; 24 cm
9780226114439, 9780226114446, 9780226114415, 9780226114422, 0226114430, 0226114449, 0226114414, 0226114422
60155921
Vol. 1. Christianity, colonialism and consciousness in South Africa. 1. Introduction
2. British beginnings: spirits of an age, signs of the times
3. Africa observed: discourses of the imperial imagination
4. African worlds: economy, culture, and society, circa 1800-1830
5. Through the looking glass: heroic journeys, first encounters
6. Conversion and conversation: narrative, form, and consciousness
7. Secular power, sacred authority: the politics of mission
8. Conclusion. Vol. 2. Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier. 1. Introduction
2. Preachers and Prophets: The Domestication of the Sacred Word
3. Cultivation, Colonialism, and Christianity: Toward a New African Genesis
4. Currencies of Conversion: Of Markets, Money, and Value
5. Fashioning the Colonial Subject: The Empire's Old Clothes
6. Mansions of the Lord: Architecture, Interiority, Domesticity
7. The Medicine of God's Word: Saving the Soul by Tending the Flesh
8. New Persons, Old Subjects: Rights, Identities, Moral Communities
9. Conclusion
Appendix