The postcolonial African state in transition : stateness and modes of sovereignty / Amy Niang.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Niang, Amy, author.

Series:

Kilombo (Series)

Kilombo : international relations and colonial questions

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Decentralization in government--Africa, West.

Decentralization in government.

Sovereignty--History.

Sovereignty.

Postcolonialism--Africa, West.

Postcolonialism.

Africa, West--Politics and government.

Africa, West.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (245 pages).

Place of Publication:

New York ; London, England : Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018.

Summary:

The Postcolonial African State in Transition offers a new perspective on a set of fundamental, albeit old questions with salient contemporary resonance: what is the nature of the postcolonial state? How did it come about? And more crucially, the book poses an often neglected question: what was the postcolonial African state internally built against? Through a detailed historical investigation of the Voltaic region, the book theorizes the state in transition as the constitutive condition of the African state, rendering centralization processes as always transient, uncertain, even dangerous endeavors. In Africa and elsewhere in the colonial and postcolonial world, the centralized sovereign state has become something of a meta-model that bears the imprint of necessity and determinism. This book argues that there is nothing natural, linear, conventional or intrinsically consensual about the centralized state form. In fact, the African state emerged, and was erected against, and at the expense of a variety of authority structures and forms of self-governance. The state has sustained itself through destructive practices, internal colonization, and in fact the production and alienation of a range of internal others.

Contents:

Political history as state ideology introduction

The trail of the horse: stateness, statelessness and the ethics of state inhibition

The time/space dynamics of the constitution of the political

Statization and centralizing processes in 18th century Moogo

Rituals as political references

The state in transition: a recapitulation.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781786606549

1786606542