Theory from the South

Jean Comaroff is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, Fellow of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, and Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town. She is co-editor of Law and Disorder in the Postcolony (2006). John L. Comaroff is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, Fellow of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, and Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town. He is co-editor of Law and Disorder in the Postcolony (2006).

“In this major transdisciplinary work, the Comaroffs (both anthropologists, Univ. of Chicago) have produced a well-crafted, nuanced, and sophisticated intervention in the meanings, limits, and Eurocentric underpinnings of modernity…The book is a welcome addition in debunking the Eurocentric binary between the ‘rational’ West and not so rational ‘non-West’ and provides a refreshing insight into what the ‘South’ has to offer in framing the future of the global human community. Theory from the South is not only ‘from the South’ but also ‘of’ and ‘about the South.’ The book further enhances the reputation of the Comaroffs as formidable critical intellectuals of the first order. Beautifully done. Essential.” -–CHOICE December 2011 Vol. 49 No. 04 "Jean and John Comaroff put forward their case in the strongest possible terms, and they do so with flair, eloquence, and brilliance: that Africa in particular and the Global South more broadly are in the vanguard of world history, generative of global futures and theory to match. This is a book that will be read and debated with vigor and profit." --Charles Piot, Duke University

• Chapter 1 Theory from the South; Chapter 2 On Personhood; Chapter 3 Liberalism, Policulturalism, and ID-ology; Chapter 4 Nations With/Out Borders; Chapter 5 Figuring Democracy; Chapter 6 History On Trial; Chapter 7 Alien-Nation; Chapter 8 Beyond Bare Life;