Fanon’s political ethics of intersubjectivity in Postcolonial African governance and citizenship
- Authors: Ogunsakin, S S
- Date: 2024
- Subjects: Political ethics , Postcolonialism , Black nationalism
- Language: English
- Type: Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10353/29878 , vital:79034
- Description: This dissertation investigates failures in postcolonial African governance and citizenship that sustain subjective and structural aspects of Black alienation, which continue to undermine critical agency and limit genuine spaces for the emancipation for postcolonial Black citizens even in the absence of direct and explicit repression. Drawing primarily on the phenomenological insights of Frantz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre into intersubjective alienation, and on contemporary analyses of postcoloniality, in the work of Achille Mbembe, Lewis Gordon, and Tseney Serequeberhan, I consider normative grounds of possibility for postcolonial Black dis-alienation, which are relevant for contexts of self-subjectification and indirect oppression, given the alienation that is engendered by structural violence, which Fanon ascribes to colonial displacements that continue to pose potential drawbacks to a vibrant postcolonial African society. Despite divergences in their accounts of postcolonial Black alienation and the construction of possible alternatives for Black freedom, I identify complementary analyses of postcoloniality in the work of Mbembe, Gordon, and Serequeberhan. All three theorists employ Fanon’s psycho-existential phenomenology of postcolonial Black alienation as a foundation for a working model of implicit, subjective, and social conditions that undermine genuine Black freedom. I argue that Serequeberhan’s hermeneutic alternative, grounded in the historico-cultural context and situatedness of Black experience, provides useful insights into the possibility of overcoming Black alienation through trans-cultural intersubjectivity and radical openness, while he departicularize solutions to the contextualized Black problems he identified. At the same time, I argue that, while Gordon redeploys Fanon’s sociogenic phenomenology to critique postcolonial Black alienation, his position remains trapped in the polarities of North South coloniality and American racial dynamics, which precludes understanding of novel configurations of power and subjectivity in postcolonial Africa. In his account of postcolonial Black alienation, Mbembe describes a distinctive situation of deficient intersubjectivity resulting from failures of postcolonial African governance systems that are characterized by autocratic leadership and further complicated by a self-defeating public complicity, wherein Black citizens reproduce their own oppression. Despite the lack of potential emancipatory clues, I argue that Mbembe’s conception of convivial politics and mutual zombification provides a compelling account of postcolonial Black alienation and self-subjectification, revealing distinctive oppressive relations marked not only by violence and alienation exclusive to dominant ruling forces, but also by social complicity and reciprocity. To respond to these challenges, I argue that Fanon’s prescient account of Black dis-alienation and practices in the context of psychiatric medicine sets out implicit complementary sources of normative political practices on the basis of which we can develop an emancipatory ethics of intersubjectivity, which suggests a nonviolent pathway to emancipatory social transformation in postcolonial African governance and citizenship, by which the Black citizen may emancipate herself from alienating conditions of oppression evident in features of structural governmentality, and in the continual reproduction of self-subjectification in the postcolony, which Mbembe describes. , Thesis (MSoc Sci) -- Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, 2024
- Full Text:
- Authors: Ogunsakin, S S
- Date: 2024
- Subjects: Political ethics , Postcolonialism , Black nationalism
- Language: English
- Type: Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10353/29878 , vital:79034
- Description: This dissertation investigates failures in postcolonial African governance and citizenship that sustain subjective and structural aspects of Black alienation, which continue to undermine critical agency and limit genuine spaces for the emancipation for postcolonial Black citizens even in the absence of direct and explicit repression. Drawing primarily on the phenomenological insights of Frantz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre into intersubjective alienation, and on contemporary analyses of postcoloniality, in the work of Achille Mbembe, Lewis Gordon, and Tseney Serequeberhan, I consider normative grounds of possibility for postcolonial Black dis-alienation, which are relevant for contexts of self-subjectification and indirect oppression, given the alienation that is engendered by structural violence, which Fanon ascribes to colonial displacements that continue to pose potential drawbacks to a vibrant postcolonial African society. Despite divergences in their accounts of postcolonial Black alienation and the construction of possible alternatives for Black freedom, I identify complementary analyses of postcoloniality in the work of Mbembe, Gordon, and Serequeberhan. All three theorists employ Fanon’s psycho-existential phenomenology of postcolonial Black alienation as a foundation for a working model of implicit, subjective, and social conditions that undermine genuine Black freedom. I argue that Serequeberhan’s hermeneutic alternative, grounded in the historico-cultural context and situatedness of Black experience, provides useful insights into the possibility of overcoming Black alienation through trans-cultural intersubjectivity and radical openness, while he departicularize solutions to the contextualized Black problems he identified. At the same time, I argue that, while Gordon redeploys Fanon’s sociogenic phenomenology to critique postcolonial Black alienation, his position remains trapped in the polarities of North South coloniality and American racial dynamics, which precludes understanding of novel configurations of power and subjectivity in postcolonial Africa. In his account of postcolonial Black alienation, Mbembe describes a distinctive situation of deficient intersubjectivity resulting from failures of postcolonial African governance systems that are characterized by autocratic leadership and further complicated by a self-defeating public complicity, wherein Black citizens reproduce their own oppression. Despite the lack of potential emancipatory clues, I argue that Mbembe’s conception of convivial politics and mutual zombification provides a compelling account of postcolonial Black alienation and self-subjectification, revealing distinctive oppressive relations marked not only by violence and alienation exclusive to dominant ruling forces, but also by social complicity and reciprocity. To respond to these challenges, I argue that Fanon’s prescient account of Black dis-alienation and practices in the context of psychiatric medicine sets out implicit complementary sources of normative political practices on the basis of which we can develop an emancipatory ethics of intersubjectivity, which suggests a nonviolent pathway to emancipatory social transformation in postcolonial African governance and citizenship, by which the Black citizen may emancipate herself from alienating conditions of oppression evident in features of structural governmentality, and in the continual reproduction of self-subjectification in the postcolony, which Mbembe describes. , Thesis (MSoc Sci) -- Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, 2024
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Identity and difference: a postcolonial analysis of Cape Malay as depicted in the literary texts from selected South African writers
- Authors: Chaudhari, Shamiega
- Date: 2009-11
- Subjects: Postcolonialism , Orientalism
- Language: Afrikaans
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/${Handle} , vital:64143
- Description: The identity of the Cape Malay is usually reduced to the submissive, the comic and the exotic dishes such as bobotie, curry and samosas. Terms like "slams","slaamaaier" and "halfnaatjie" (Roos 2003:3) were just a few of the derogatory names that was awarded to the Cape Malay. Many of these terms and identity constructions are in the South African literature immortalized. The true history, the struggle, tears and sacrifices of this community slipped by unnoticed and in silence. And today, after all this suffering, they become identity is called into question and this identity is referred to as a controversial identity. In the Western Cape this identity mainly centered around being Malay, being Coloured, Being Cape Muslim or Black Muslim. It seems as if the Cape Malay is in an intermediate identity (defined in English as "inbetweenness") are trapped, defined by their "Muslimness","Cape-ness", "Malay-ness" and "Coloured-ness". This dissertation examines the controversy of the Cape Malay identity and focus specifically on identity construction and Otherness. It emphasizes certain characteristics that people divided due to certain character traits that are different from the norm and therefore cause that they are considered the Other. The study is undertaken with the aim of establishing the authenticity of the Cape Malay identity state and how it is depicted in the works of selected South African writers. It intends to look specifically at the construction of identity through Otherness during the colonial period in Southern Africa as well as how these identities were implemented, rejected or accepted is. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, 2009
- Full Text:
- Authors: Chaudhari, Shamiega
- Date: 2009-11
- Subjects: Postcolonialism , Orientalism
- Language: Afrikaans
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/${Handle} , vital:64143
- Description: The identity of the Cape Malay is usually reduced to the submissive, the comic and the exotic dishes such as bobotie, curry and samosas. Terms like "slams","slaamaaier" and "halfnaatjie" (Roos 2003:3) were just a few of the derogatory names that was awarded to the Cape Malay. Many of these terms and identity constructions are in the South African literature immortalized. The true history, the struggle, tears and sacrifices of this community slipped by unnoticed and in silence. And today, after all this suffering, they become identity is called into question and this identity is referred to as a controversial identity. In the Western Cape this identity mainly centered around being Malay, being Coloured, Being Cape Muslim or Black Muslim. It seems as if the Cape Malay is in an intermediate identity (defined in English as "inbetweenness") are trapped, defined by their "Muslimness","Cape-ness", "Malay-ness" and "Coloured-ness". This dissertation examines the controversy of the Cape Malay identity and focus specifically on identity construction and Otherness. It emphasizes certain characteristics that people divided due to certain character traits that are different from the norm and therefore cause that they are considered the Other. The study is undertaken with the aim of establishing the authenticity of the Cape Malay identity state and how it is depicted in the works of selected South African writers. It intends to look specifically at the construction of identity through Otherness during the colonial period in Southern Africa as well as how these identities were implemented, rejected or accepted is. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, 2009
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