Provisional notes on the postcolony

Abstract

The exercise of power in African states since independence—generalised here under the term the ‘postcolony’—has been marked by a liking for ceremonial and by an exhibitionism that is the more remarkable seeing how illusory are the states’ practical achievements. Furthermore, power is exercised with a degree of violence and naked exploitation that has its antecedents in previous colonial regimes. People's response is a ribaldry that revels in the obscene. The general question is why this power, despite its obvious limitations, is seemingly so effective. More specifically, why does the population apparently collude with its government; how can it laugh at the antics of its rulers and yet at the same time join in celebrating them? The argument put forward here along with evidence mainly from Cameroon and Togo is that, if analysis focuses on the detailed processes and rituals of collusion, it becomes clear that there is an intimacy, an almost domestic familiarity, in the relationship between ruler and ruled which effectively disarms both and turns power-play into performance.

Death and Dying in the History of Africa Since 1800

“…Some regimes of violence and terror are described as being so commonplace as to render death itself banal and emptied of meaning. 43 In other cases, violence, far from being devoid of meaning, appears to be saturated with meanings of the sacred and closely associated with spirituality. 44 Given the very diverse nature of African societies, it would be absurd to propose one narrative for the historical relationship between violence and political power in Africa, but clearly there is a need for more work with a long-term perspective on this issue.…”

African languages, and information communication technologies and development

“…Bourdieu's language capital will be complemented by the paradigm of indocility evidenced in contemporary African scholarship (e.g. Ela 1998;Mbembe 1992). In his attempt to adapt Bourdieu's model to the complex Sub-Saharan African multilingual context, Omoniyi (2003: 7) argued for differentiating linguistic capital and language capital, the former pertaining to "intra-language competition" (2003: 7) and the latter relating to the multilingual situations.…”

The politics and aesthetics of commemoration: national days in southern Africa

“…As Raminder Kaur's (2005:4-5) ethnography of performative politics and Hinduism in colonial and postcolonial India, has demonstrated, modes of apprehending the nation … have been and continue to be, fired by the viscerality of performances -gatherings, marches, campaigns, ceremonies, festivals, processions, and so forth. Achille Mbembe's (1992) argument about the dramaturgy of the African postcolonial state adds another important point. He demonstrates, with special reference to Cameroon, that performance and ritual play a crucial role in the making and re-making of the relations between rulers and the ruled citizens.…”

“…The contestations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and particularly in its capital Kinshasa, on the other hand, appear to be entirely a matter of the postcolony. 10 As Pype (in this issue), following Mbembe (1992) and Karlström (2003) shows, ceremonies such as those staged on the fiftieth anniversary of the attainment of Congolese independence have become the privileged 'language' through which the rulers speak. At the same time, they have become a stage for communicative interaction between the rulers and the ruled -a stage on which, Pype concludes, the citizens of the capital showed the country's political elite that in their eyes the country's rulers did not belong to the national community as imagined and experienced by the Kinois.…”