The Creolization of Political Theory and the dialectic of emancipatory thought: a plea for synthesis

publisher versionThe paper discusses Jane-Anna Gordon's important idea of the Creolization of Poitical Theory with reference to the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Frantz Fanon. It makes an argument for synthesizing this initiative with dialectical thought in order to transcend the analytical vision which gave birth to the creolizing of theory. This synthesis is proposed in order to make sense of the real of any politics of universal emancipation and to incorporate the theoretical inventions of popular actions

Development, Social Citizenship and Human Rights: Re-thinking the Political Core of an Emancipatory Project in Africa

The paper begins from the axiomatic point that, despite the form it eventually took, namely that of a neo-colonial process, development was understood and fought for in Africa as [part of] an emancipatory political project central to the liberatory vision of the pan-African nationalism which emerged victorious at independence. Indeed independence was always seen, by radical nationalism in particular, as only the first step towards freedom and liberation from oppression,the second being economic development. Indeed ‘economism’ and ‘statism’ were mirror images of each other: it was believed that only the economy could liberate humanity and that only the state could drive the economy to progress. Today, the first proposition has been retained but the second has been dropped from hegemonic discourse. Yet the two are inseparable twins; it is in fact the case that just as the latter is false so is the former, for human emancipation is and can only be a political project. While development today is said to be guided by the (not so invisible) “hand of the market”, the state has simultaneously ‘subcontracted’ many of its development management functions to external bodies such as NGOs. These are frequently simply new parastatals, vehicles for social entrepreneurship for a ‘new’ middle-class of development professionals. We have now a new form of state rule which forms the context for re-thinking developmentand politics. Central to this new form of rule is the hegemony ofhuman rights discourse. This paper begins by reviewing the political assumptions of the nature of citizenship underlying T.H. Marshall’s argument for ‘social rights’; it provides a critique of human rights discourse and civil society from an emancipatory perspective, situating these within the new forms of imperialism and comments on the character of political parties and social movements in understanding political emancipation today. It argues that in Africa, if one is to think an emancipatory project, citizenship must be conceived as activecitizenship, and political subjectivity must be thought, not as management or opinions but, following the work of Badiou and Lazarus, as the freedom to think new ‘possibles’

Labour after Land Reform: The Precarious Livelihoods of Former Farmworkers in Zimbabwe

What happens to labour when major redistributive land reform restructures a system of settler colonial agriculture? This article examines the livelihoods of former farmworkers on large‐scale commercial farms who still live in farm compounds after Zimbabwe's land reform. Through a mix of surveys and in‐depth biographical interviews, four different types of livelihood are identified, centred on differences in land access. These show how diverse, but often precarious, livelihoods are being carved out, representing the ‘fragmented classes of labour’ in a restructured agrarian economy. The analysis highlights the tensions between gaining new freedoms, notably through access to land, and being subject to new livelihood vulnerabilities. The findings are discussed in relation to wider questions about the informalization of the economy and the role of labour and employment in a post‐settler agrarian economy, where the old ‘farmworker’ label no longer applies

Speak out on poverty: Hearing, inaudibility, and citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa

In 1998, Speak Out on Poverty held hearings across South Africa shortly after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) completed eighteen months of highly publicized, nationwide hearings at which victims testified. Speak Out challenged the TRC’s focus on overt political violations, seen to occlude forms of structural violence central to apartheid's policy and practice, as well as longer legacies of colonialism. Reading Speak Out alongside the TRC puts pressure on supposed differences between official truth commissions or tribunals and those run by civil society. Discussing Speak Out in relation to the TRC signaled more than a set of comparisons. In a time of transition, Speak Out spoke from within and against the noise of the TRC. It aimed to make poverty and inequality the nation's priority rather than reconciliation, or at least to challenge notions of reconciliation that did not have inequity and poverty at its center

Thinking Political Emancipation and the Social Sciences in Africa: Some Critical Reflections

The freedom which Africa was to attain with liberation from colonialism had originally promised to emancipate all the people of the continent from poverty and oppression. Yet anyone can observe that this has not happened. Uhuru is still elusive; freedom seems unattainable. Nationalist, socialist and neo-liberal conceptions of human emancipation have all failed to provide a minimum of freedom for the majority of Africans who are living under conditions which worsen daily as the crisis of capitalism and liberal democracy worsens. All three of these views of freedom were elaborated and theorised as universal by the social sciences. It is these conceptions which still orientate our thought. The fact that freedom has not been achieved evidently means that our thinking has so far been deficient. This article argues that the social sciences have played their part in our inability to think freedom and are consequently in need of fundamental restructuring. Central to their limitations if not their failure to comprehend emancipation in a manner adequate to the problems of the twenty-first century in Africa, has arguably been their inability to take what excluded people say seriously enough. In the past they have been plagued by the notion that only those with knowledge and power are capable of thinking a new way forward, thus aligning their thinking with that of the state (either in its current or forthcoming form). Given the lack of success of the social sciences in thinking human emancipation so far, we should consider alternatives which are open to popular perspectives. The article argues for an expansion of the social sciences to include the idea that ‘people think’ in Africa, and that therefore reason is not exclusively the prerogative of academics and politicians. Marx once observed that ‘the state has need ... of a very stern education by the people’. This remark is even truer today than it was in his time

Agrarian reform and the development of capitalism in agriculture A critical analysis of theories of agricultural development and agrarian reform, with reference to agrarian reform policies in Chile (1962-1973)

2 volsAvailable from British Library Lending Division - LD:D54842/85 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

A Desire for Isolation? Mass Public Attitudes in South Africa Toward Immigration Levels

In the last decade incidents of xenophobia in South Africa have been prevalent. Are such anti-immigration attitudes related to a desire for isolationism in the country and support for a withdrawal from world affairs? Using data from the 2013 round of the nationally representative South African Social Attitudes Survey, this article was able to shed light on determinants of anti-immigration attitudes using multivariate techniques. Foreign policy attitudes and cultural patriotism were found to be salient determinants of attitudes toward preferred immigration level. Support for isolationism was a better predictor than economic position. The findings suggest that discouraging isolationism would reduce xenophobia in the country.