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- Convenor:
-
Chloé Buire
(Les Afriques dans le Monde - CNRS)
Send message to Convenor
- Chair:
-
Elara Bertho
(CNRS)
- Stream:
- Social Anthropology
- Location:
- Appleton Tower, Seminar Room 2.04
- Sessions:
- Thursday 13 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel interrogates the emotional work imposed by the new forms of citizenship that characterise African politics since 2011. We aim to explore the affective connections at play in the formation of political subjectivities where optimism and hopelessness seem so close to each other.
Long Abstract:
Since 2011, various popular movements have reshaped the practices and meanings of citizenship in Africa from the bottom up. These new citizens' initiatives entered national debates through objects ranging from electoral mobilization ("Y'en a Marre" in Senegal), to constitutional change ("Balai Citoyen" in Burkina Faso), to public education ("FeesMustFall" in South Africa) or to the legitimation of civil society ("15+2" in Angola) but all have become symbols of a broader renewal in African politics. The literature has emphasized the growing mobilization of urban youth, the use of social media and the politicisation of popular culture (especially through hip hop). Less has been said about the emotional work imposed by these forms of politics that seem to grow simultaneously on both hope and suffering. Our panel zooms onto the intrapersonal and interpersonal affective capacities at play in the formation of these new political subjectivities.
How do activists navigate a complex map of emotions where fear and frustrations respond to feelings of empowerment and tangible change? If emotions are often said to be key in triggering political action, how do they sediment on the longer term? What is the afterlife of the affective connections born during the mobilization? How do we engage the emotional memory of a political mo(ve)ment?
The panel welcomes ethnographic explorations of the affects and emotions that sustain or undermine mobilization during and beyond moments of political climax. We also invite reflections about the methods we can use to include affects and emotions in our understanding of political subjectivities.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 13 June, 2019, -Jean-Baptiste Lanne (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris)
Paper short abstract:
This paper engages with the long term and almost invisible emotions-building at work in particular urban youth micro-societies: the 'youthgroups' of Nairobi. Based on an ethnographic approach, It seeks to connect this discreet sharing of emotions to more visible political mobilisations.
Paper long abstract:
In the kenyan context, a regular emphasis has been laid upon intense mobilisation of the youth from poor neighbourhoods before and during moments of political climax. Both their feeling of despair and opportunistic involvement (available for hire to any politician who will pay them) have been underlined to explain spectacular and violent modes of actions. Acknowledging this, my paper engages with the long term and almost invisible emotions-building at work in particular urban youth micro-societies: the 'youthgroups' of Nairobi, involved in local security and lucrative poly-activities in the city's poor neighbourhoods. Relying on Rachel Pain's 'seismologies of emotion' (2014), I argue that an everyday and mutual sharing of emotions during endless moments of waiting at street corners and boutique's doorsteps feeds a singular citizenship that might explain most spectacular events and forms of activism. Fear of premature death (mostly due to police extra-judicial killings, Van Stapele 2016), despair, boredom, feeling of living a mundane existence along with excitement, hope, brotherhood, collective pride, all these emotional states are closely intertwined to spin an ambivalent relationship to time (and especially the political one). As some emotions lead to an experience of slowness and frustration (boredom for example), others potentially produce an urgency to live and act (fear of not living long). Considering both the material and non-material productions of this particular citizenship 'from the corner' (popular jokes, linguistic idioms, drawings, poetry, particular places of collective waiting), I try to examine its possible connections to more visible and extraordinary political mobilisations.
Chloé Buire (Les Afriques dans le Monde - CNRS)
Paper short abstract:
This paper unravels how the so-called 'Born Frees' are inventing new forms of citizenship. Youth collectives observed in Cape Town and Luanda since 2014 show that politics is an affective engagement, mixing fun and violence, friendship and resentment, immediate mobilisation and structural awareness.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores how young adults interpret and practice politics in times of disenchantment.
On the one hand, the South African paradox: despite the romantic attachment to a political culture rooted in 'The struggle', practices of 'insurgent citizenship' inherited from anti-apartheid movements have been largely reinterpreted through a model of 'active citizenship' that insists on the duties of good citizens rather than on their critical thinking.
On the other hand, the Angolan "culture of fear" where political domination and indoctrination tightly constrain the construction of political subjectivities. In the wake of the Arab Spring, burgeoning youth movements have tried to challenge the silence of civil society without leading to a radical rupture so far.
Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Cape Town and in Luanda since 2014, the paper unravels how the so-called 'Born Frees' experience and navigate these norms of citizenship. Rather than focusing on spectacular mobilisation, the research follows various youth collectives across both cities and questions the possibility of civic engagement between 'civil' and 'political' society. Through in-depth interviews and participatory methods, it documents the fine grain of political subjectivities in the making. Neither post-political subjects nor revolutionary champions, the young people involved in this research invite us to look beyond archetypes of 'good citizens', 'party footsoldiers', 'social entrepreneurs' or 'rebels' in order to reframe citizenship as a matter of sentiment mixing fun and violence, friendship and resentment, immediate engagement and structural awareness.