THE LEGIBILITY OF POLITICAL SEQUENCES

Whereas the previous three chapters have been concerned to show the excessive character of various emancipatory modes of politics and the manner in which this excess interacted with expressive political subjectivity, this chapter and the next have a more analytical purpose. More precisely, they are concerned to examine how the idea of a historical sequence may be used to analyse historical changes in political subjectivities in South Africa (in this chapter) and how popular militancy may be rethought for the 21st century in Africa (in chapter 7). There is therefore a slight shift in the argument to emphasise the analytical purpose of the arguments developed so far. This will then lead me to conclude the first part of this book through an analytical comparison of two South African social movements in order to illustrate the different political subjectivities at play in each.

In order to make our period legible, it is important also to make earlier periods legible; it is this that will be attempted in the present chapter in relation to recent South African history. The sequence of national liberation struggles in Africa examined in chapter 4, which cohered around a particular set of political subjectivities emphasising freedom, justice, equality and the affirmation of a total humanity, has now ended, and consequently it has become more difficult to orient our thoughts around issues of emancipatory politics and their possible forms. The absence of emancipatory thinking today is having nefarious consequences, as it is currently difficult to imagine an Idea of an alternative future in which the youth in particular can identify with a more humane society in which massive poverty and powerlessness are not considered inevitable features of life on our continent.