An event-aftermath narration would distort and overlook much. A heuristic of two states ensures that not only epidemics come to the fore but also vernacular and securitizing dynamics with much policing of therapeutic insurgency. A nervous state extends well beyond the techniques and persons of colonial power. As a concept, the nervous opens colonial history to harm and moods, notably nervousness, nervosité, and trembling. This disposition or category stretched from a psychiatric malady; everyday colonial fear and panic, merging with revulsion in dread; and female spirit possession, healing, and dancing coiled and uncoiled. Other concepts include Canguilhem’s shrunken milieu and latitude, Bachelard’s reverie, and Balandier’s pointing at pathological crises. Historiographically, the way histories of imperial medicine have been limited to the biopolitical is rejected, whereas Africanist public healing is widened to practices of making war and making joy within everyday life and within mobile movements of charms.
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