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179 8 w฀ Domestic Dramas and Occult Acts Witchcraft and Violence in the Arena of the Intimate katherine luongo focusing on colonial kenya, I consider “witchcraft”-related violence as a space in which to explore the wider meanings of “domestic violence” and the broader scope of state interventions into intimate relations.1 Cases of witchcraft-driven violence can be read as being as much about domestic dramas as they are about occult actions. Focusing on such crimes opens avenues to further analyze and historicize violence as well as domesticity and intimacy. Reading witchcraft-related crimes as incidences of “domestic violence” suggests that “witchcraft” was one of the few tropes available in colonial legal settings for talking about domestic violence in Kenya. It indicates that state authorities regarded disciplining witchcraft not simply as a matter of law but as yet another arena in which to (tacitly) intervene in Africans’ intimate affairs. Witch-driven murders offer a wider view of the domestic, figuring it not simply as contained within the bounds of the individual homestead but also including communal spaces where activities related to the community’s social reproduction occurred. Reading witchcraft-related crimes as domestic violence broadens the scope of the term domestic violence. Witchcraft-related domestic violence includes actions perpetrated by alleged witches and encompasses an alleged witch’s lethal speech and deadly thoughts as well as the epistemological violence of the witchcraft accusation, a speech act often leading to retributive physical violence and even to the witch’s death. Reading witchcraft-related crimes within the context of domestic violence complicates issues of power. It demonstrates that domestic violence is not necessarily or even primarily an issue of male power directed against a female intimate partner. Male and female witches are equally alleged to be the initial instigators of violence against intimate partners such as spouses or lovers, 180 w฀ Katherine Luongo but also against assorted kin—especially children—and close associates. The epistemological violence of accusations of witchcraft and the retributive violence directed against witches are also wielded equally by women and men.2 Witchcraft-driven domestic violence foregrounds the affective states underlying the will to power tied up in domestic violence. State documents pertaining to witchcraft-related violence demonstrate that officials recognized that the circumstances of such crimes were rife with intimate abuse and domestic conflict. Reading such records with an eye for the intimate reveals how colonial authorities approached cases of witchcraftdriven domestic violence as an additional space to intrude upon Africans’ interpersonal conduct, suggesting what sorts of attitudes and affective states were legally recognizable and “reasonable.” Colonial court transcripts in witch-murder cases give narrative form to the domestic dramas underlying occult actions and subsequent violence. Judicial opinions turned primarily on legal questions of “malice aforethought” and “grave and sudden provocation.” These principles hinged on the affect and intent underlying the domestic dramas driving witchcraft-related violence. More subtly, antiwitchcraft legislation suggested the state’s recognition of the affective states wrapped up in witchcraft practices (and accusations) and in resulting episodes of domestic violence. As Stacey Hynd notes in this volume, “In colonial Africa, murder trials were an arena where notions of ‘violence’ and socially acceptable behavior clashed and were contested, where private lives became the subject of public discourses.”3 This chapter offers a case study of a witch-murder trial, Rex versus Ali Mwinyi, in which domestic dramas underlay (alleged) occult acts and violence .4 Out of numerous witch-murder dossiers accessible in the Ministry of Legal Affairs case files, I have chosen to focus on Ali Mwinyi because it entails exceptional elements of intimacy buried within broader judicial narratives.5 In 1953, Ali Mwinyi, a Digo teenager from Kwale District, was tried in the Supreme Court of Kenya for killing Juma Ali, the father of a close friend of the accused. The defense argued that Ali Mwinyi had been justified in killing Juma Ali after experiencing years of escalating bewitchment at his hands. Juma Ali, the defense asserted, had initiated his serial pattern of witchcraft against the accused late one night as Ali Mwinyi and Juma Ali’s son slept in the son’s space.6 yet, neither the defense nor the prosecution raised the issue that the “funny things” Ali Mwinyi had vaguely described in various legal settings as marking the initial act of bewitchment also included an incidence of male rape. Ali Mwinyi indicates how colonial jurisprudence regarded the African “household as an imaginary space” in which “violence occur[red] as...

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