Embodied spirits: Non-human agencies and the production of knowledge of normativity in colonial Mozambique

Promotionsprojekt

This project examines how non-human agencies shaped the production of knowledge of normativity in colonial Mozambique. It argues that colonial law was not produced solely through the imposition of European legal concepts but also through everyday encounters with local cosmological frameworks in which spirits, plants, animals and other non-human entities were understood as active participants in social life. Rather than remaining external to legal reasoning, these ontological assumptions frequently entered the practical processes through which colonial authorities interpreted disputes, exercised power and produced normative knowledge.

In many Mozambican contexts, cosmological perceptions that linked humans, spirits, animals and plants as part of an interconnected world structured many forms of social regulation and conflict resolution. Yet the implications of these cosmologies for colonial legal practice have rarely been examined. Existing scholarship on African colonial law has focused primarily on institutional structures, codification or the interaction between customary and colonial legal systems. This project proposes a different perspective: it investigates how encounters with the non-human – understood as real and effective forces by local actors – affected the everyday production and interpretation of colonial law.

Conceptually, the research engages with anthropological debates on non-human agency associated with the work of Philippe Descola and Bruno Latour, as well as with discussions surrounding the ‘ontological turn’ in cultural anthropology. These debates challenge the assumption that social analysis should privilege exclusively human actors, highlighting instead the role of multiple kinds of entities in shaping social realities. By bringing these discussions into dialogue with legal history, the project explores how different ontological frameworks intersected within colonial governance.

Methodologically, the study is grounded in recent approaches to the history of the ‘production of knowledge of normativity’, understanding law as a result of a historically contingent process shaped by practices of interpretation, negotiation and cultural translation. From this perspective, colonial law emerged not simply from legislative texts but from the interactions through which normative meaning was produced in concrete situations of conflict.

The research combines a wide range of sources in order to reconstruct these processes. Oral history and interviews play a special role, particularly in the African context where oral traditions constitute key forms of historical memory and knowledge. These sources allow access to different epistemologies and lived experiences often absent from colonial archives. They are analysed alongside colonial literature, ethnographic reports and legal doctrine, which frequently reveal how colonial actors perceived and translated local normative frameworks.

Particular attention is given to criminal and civil cases involving accusations of ‘sorcery’ or the invocation of invisible forces in disputes over contracts or obligations. These cases illuminate how colonial administrators confronted ontological frameworks different from their own and how such encounters shaped legal interpretation in practice.

Rather than affirming or denying the existence of non-human agencies, the project analyses how their presence became intelligible, actionable and legally consequential within colonial contexts. In doing so, it seeks to contribute to broader debates on how law itself is shaped by particular ways of imagining reality and how alternative epistemologies challenge the epistemic boundaries of modern legal thought.