Kenyatta’s lament: Oaths and the transformation of ritual ideologies in colonial Kenya

This article provides an ethnographically and historically grounded critique of Giorgio Agamben’s claim that oaths, like religion and law, reflect a universal experience of the failure of language to obligate people. I show how Agamben’s critique of the oath only becomes relevant in the colonial Kenyan context after missionaries and administrators had facilitated the “unmaking” of Kikuyu ideologies of ritual efficacy. Specifically, it tracks how colonial administrators and Kikuyu elders came to understand the customary nature of elder authority through the representational and regulatory capacity that objects known as ĩthathi were held to have. In the end, administrators and elders came to share an ideology linking ritual efficacy and elder authority, jointly participating in the naturalization of that relationship while failing to anticipate where it would lead.

Title	Kenyatta’s lament: Oaths and the transformation of ritual ideologies in colonial Kenya
Creator	Blunt, Robert W.
Publisher	Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Academic Department	Religious Studies
Division	Humanities
Organization	Lafayette College
Date Issued	2013
Date Available	2015-05-13T17:36:10Z
Type	Article
Language	English
Keyword	sovereignty
	Agamben
	colonialism
	oath
	semiotic ideology
	Mau Mau
	ritual
Bibliographic Citation	Blunt, R. W. (2013) "Kenyatta’s lament: Oaths and the transformation of ritual ideologies in colonial Kenya." Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3 (3): 167-93.
Standard Identifier	DOI 10.14318/hau3.3.008
Standard Identifier	Handle 10385/1892
Permalink	http://hdl.handle.net/10385/1892
Rights Statement	Creative Commons - Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives
Rights Holders	Blunt, Robert W.