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1)
MANDANI, MAHMOOD (1996) Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 3-34
etiope@gmail.com @africanstates
AIMS
Explain why and how institutional segregation was developed as part of the colonial project to stabilize racial domination.
4 objectives:
Question the writing of history by analogy. Establish the historical legitimacy of Africa as a unit of analysis
Establish that apartheid is actually the generic form of the colonial state in Africa. Colonial rule can be generically understood as decentralized despotism Underline the contradictory character of ethnicity. Problematize the way liberational movements dealt with ethnicity Show that although the bifurcated state created with colonialism was deracialized after independence, it was not democratized
etiope@gmail.com @africanstates
AIMS
3
questions:
To what extent was the (current) structure of power shaped in the colonial period rather than in the anticolonial revolt? Rather than just uniting diverse ethnic groups in a common predicament, was not racial domination actually mediated through a variety of ethnically organized local powers? If power reproduced itself by exaggerating difference and denying the existence of an oppressed majority, is not the burden of protest to transcend these differences without denying them?
etiope@gmail.com @africanstates
DISCUSSION
Discussion on Africa suffering from an impasse, by sticking to either liberal (free civil society) or communitarian views (put communities at the center)
South Africa as an archetype of the colonial response to the native question: territorial plus institutional segregation (specific native institutions)
etiope@gmail.com @africanstates
DISCUSSION
A
balance to be struck between ahistorical structuralism and free agency as posed by poststructuralism
Binary oppositions of structuralism (modern/pre-modern, developed/underdeveloped) superseded by poststructuralism
Structural inequality does not negate by itself historicity (Bayart). The latter still exists even if the former is present
Between the exceptional (structuralism) and the routinary, universalist (poststructuralism) theres space to argue for the specificity of the African experience while allowing for a comparative perspective not building on analogy with the West
etiope@gmail.com @africanstates
DISCUSSION
etiope@gmail.com @africanstates
DISCUSSION
etiope@gmail.com @africanstates
DISCUSSION
The
bifurcated state
Indirect rule became the dominating strategy after the Scramble It was based on a distinction between urban society, under direct rule, where only civilized people had civil rights and natives were excluded, and rural areas, under indirect rule, where customary law would apply along with the rule of tribal authorities Urban power spoke the language of civil society and civil rights, urban power of community and culture (p. 18)
etiope@gmail.com @africanstates
DISCUSSION
The
bifurcated state
The colonial state as protector of the society of colons, thus exclusion both of rural and urban populations Anticolonial struggle: embryonic (urban) middle and working classes fighting for their entry into civil society Independence: Africanization brings 1) redress, and then 2) redistribution, but under the same existing lines (regional, ethnic, religious). Hence, patrimonialism Current stage: collapse of embryonic civil society, absorption by the state
etiope@gmail.com @africanstates
DISCUSSION
The
bifurcated state
Land was defined as a customary communal holding. But the African was defined not as a native but as a tribesperson. British rule sought to civilize Africans as communities, not as individuals Amongst all the traditions existing in the XIXth century, that of contemporary conquest states was privileged and enforced as the basis of customary authority Alongside with enforced custom was force. Since tribes were left out of market relations, and thus labor could not be mobilised by markets, the only way to extract labor was through extra-economic coercion: forced labor, forced contributions, etc.
etiope@gmail.com @africanstates
DISCUSSION
DISCUSSION
etiope@gmail.com @africanstates