ABSTRACT
The postcolony is a chaotic, fragmented entity, the pluralities of which defy business-as-usual scholarly analysis. And yet there is some regularity in the postcolony's chaos. Just as the seemingly infinite mutable patterns in cloud movements or gushing streams have "structures," so in the complex chaos of the postcolony there is what Mbembe calls an "internal coherence." 1 Indeed, postcolonies are characterized by a system of signs—a discourse— in which the state creates significantly empty symbols—veritable simulacra. The postcolony,
is not, however, just an economy of signs in which power is mirrored or imagined self-reflectedly. The postcolony is characterized by a distinctive art of improvisation, by a tendency to excess and disproportion as well as by distinctive ways in which identities are multiplied, transformed, and put into circulation. It is likewise made up of a series of corporate institutions, and apparatuses which, once they are deployed, constitute a distinctive regime of violence. 2
Mbembe also argues that postcolonies in Africa at least consist of what he calls, "the commandament", the French term used to mark a colonial regime that wields absolute power and that tolerates nothing less than total discipline and obeisance. 3