Wizard of the crow by Ngugi wa Thiong’o

The link between the body and politics goes back to Roman and Medieval times. As Ernst Kantorowicz showed in his study of the Double Body of the King1, the image of a royal body, at once natural and limite d by death and mystical and eternal, emerged and was commonly used in Tudor law. The image of the people, of the nation as a body, whose members or limbs each have a part to play, is also a recurring image throughout political philosophy. In his last novel, The Wizard of  the Crow2, Ngugi uses this image of the body, whether of power or of the people, to depict the functioning of a fictitious African dictatorship: Aburiria.