Chronicles of Restlessness
The Maison Suger is pleased to host a presentation of the book Chroniques de l'intranquilité. Violence, prédation et protection en situation postcoloniale by Michel Naepels, published in April 2026 by EHESS Gallimard Seuil, with Fabio Viti (AMU, IMAf, Société des africanistes).
The seminar will be held in french.
How does one live amid acute uncertainty? For five years, Michel Naepels conducted several field investigations in the resource-rich mining region of Katanga, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in a rural area where an armed peasant group was forming. The book he wrote is a chronicle of the social unrest and transformations sparked by the presence of armed men. For how can one endure violence in the long term, without refuge? What recourses do the most vulnerable people have to regain protection and support, to redefine a viable future, in the face of the brutality of the exercise of power and predatory relationships? To understand this, the author examines what these people are going through, their ways of life, their capacity for action, and their perspectives, while also questioning his own role as a researcher. Michel Naepels thus unfolds a political anthropology of violence, predation, and capitalism. He analyzes how historical (colonial), economic (extractivist), and political logics shape lives on the edge of existence. Above all, he bears witness to a time—our time—in which we see precariousness, violence, and vulnerability spreading, and the future wavering. A time in which we face, uneasily, with dwindling social protections and highly unequal economic and subjective resources, an increasingly uninhabitable world.
Michel Naepels is an anthropologist, a research director at the CNRS, and a director of studies at EHESS. He has conducted ethnographic studies in two rural regions affected by violence: New Caledonia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His publications include *Histoires de terres kanakes* (Belin, 1998), Ethnography, Pragmatics, History (Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2011), Conjuring War (Éditions de l’EHESS, 2013), and In Distress (Éditions de l’EHESS, 2019). He received the CNRS Silver Medal in 2022.
Fabio Viti is an anthropologist, professor at Aix-Marseille Université (AMU), researcher at IMAF-Aix, director of the Anthropology Department (2023-2025), member of the “Espaces, Cultures, Sociétés” doctoral school (AMU). His research topics include the political and historical anthropology of the Baoulé, slavery, personal dependency relationships, work and learning, war and violence, colonization etc. His main publications:
- Il potere debole. Antropologia politica dell'Aitu nvle (Baule, Costa d'Avorio), Milano, F. Angeli,1998, 416 p.
- Schiavi, servi e dipendenti. Antropologia delle forme di dipendenza personale in Africa, Milano, Raffaello Cortina, 2007, XVIII-298 p.
- Travail et apprentissage en Afrique de l'Ouest (Sénégal, Côte d'Ivoire, Togo), Paris, Karthala, 2013, 312 p.
- La Guerre au Baoulé. Une ethnographie historique du fait guerrier, Paris, Éditions de la MSH, 2024, 496 p. (→ Watch his interview on Canal-U)
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