Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Politics is thought, thought is real, people think
- Part 1 Thinking political sequences: From African history to African historical political sequences
- Part 2 Opening up the thought of politics in Africa today: Exceeding the limits of sociology: Beyond representation
- 9 Theoretical introduction: Social representation, modes of rule and political prescriptions
- 10 Marxism and the politics of representation: The ‘agrarian question’ and the limits of political economy – class, nation and the party-state
- 11 Thinking beyond representation, acting beyond representation: Accounting for worker subjectivities in South Africa
- 12 Renaming the state in Africa today
- 13 Domains of state politics and systemic violence: The concept of ‘uncivil society’
- 14 The domain of civil society and its politics
- 15 The domain of traditional society and its politics
- 16 Towards a politics of solidarity: Feminist contributions
- Conclusion: Reclaiming the domain of freedom
- Bibliography
- Index
13 - Domains of state politics and systemic violence: The concept of ‘uncivil society’
from Part 2 - Opening up the thought of politics in Africa today: Exceeding the limits of sociology: Beyond representation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2018
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Politics is thought, thought is real, people think
- Part 1 Thinking political sequences: From African history to African historical political sequences
- Part 2 Opening up the thought of politics in Africa today: Exceeding the limits of sociology: Beyond representation
- 9 Theoretical introduction: Social representation, modes of rule and political prescriptions
- 10 Marxism and the politics of representation: The ‘agrarian question’ and the limits of political economy – class, nation and the party-state
- 11 Thinking beyond representation, acting beyond representation: Accounting for worker subjectivities in South Africa
- 12 Renaming the state in Africa today
- 13 Domains of state politics and systemic violence: The concept of ‘uncivil society’
- 14 The domain of civil society and its politics
- 15 The domain of traditional society and its politics
- 16 Towards a politics of solidarity: Feminist contributions
- Conclusion: Reclaiming the domain of freedom
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This attack is an attempt to suppress the voice that has emerged from the dark corners of our country. That voice is the voice of ordinary poor people. This attack is an attempt to terrorise that voice back into the dark corners. It is an attempt to turn the frustration and anger of the poor onto the poor so that we will miss the real enemy … Our crime is a simple one. We are guilty of giving the poor the courage to organise the poor. We are guilty of trying to give ourselves human values. We are guilty of expressing our views. Those in power are determined not to take instruction from the poor. They are determined that the people shall not govern. What prospects are there for the rest of the country if the invasion of Kennedy Road is overlooked? … Our message to the movements, the academics, the churches and the human rights groups is this: We are calling for close and careful scrutiny into the nature of democracy in South Africa.
– S'bu Zikode, 2009When politics loses itself in identities, it is finished. This situation only gives rise to wars, civil wars and horrors.
– Alain Badiou, ‘Que signifie changer le monde?’, 2010 (my translation)STATE MODES OF RULE AND THE PEOPLE
In order to make an argument for an appropriate name for the state in Africa, one needs to establish precisely how the state currently rules the people, particularly given the absence of a national state project of development, which constituted its main way of ruling during the immediate post-independence period. This investigation will be the object of this chapter. It will show that the state's ways of ruling today (its modes of rule) are varied, and produce distinct ways of subjectively apprehending political agency. We shall see that the identification of a multiplicity of modes of rule by the African state – of which there are basically three kinds – helps to demarcate distinct domains of state politics, which are not simply reducible to the social location of the ruled. These modes of rule are partly inherited and adapted from colonial discourse and practice, and partly invented. The ruled themselves contribute to the reproduction of these modes of rule by participating and struggling within them. They will be discussed at greater length in the following two chapters.
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- Information
- Thinking Freedom in AfricaToward a Theory of Emancipatory Politics, pp. 400 - 446Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2016