Original Power Pointing: Legibility and Opacity in the Deictic Field

Abstract

ABSTRACT Governance by domination is easy to ‘read’ for political theory, but what about modes of governance that operate without centralised institutions? Such modes of governance are exemplified in the social relations of San in southern Africa. They rely on deictic practices (most fundamentally, pointing and being pointed at) that remain largely under the analytic radar of political theory. This contribution shows how such practices structure social interactions yet can also undermine domination. While state legibility is built on symbolic action, opacity in non-centralised environments is sustained through deictic action: The contribution shows that San strategies are not geared towards eliminating opacity or towards embracing it but rather towards dealing with it in a way that keeps egalitarian relations and personal autonomy in place. The observed practices are characterised by high degrees of mutuality and transience and are part of the larger repertoire of political levelling mechanisms that sustain egalitarianism.