Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how national narrative emerges when a bottom-up social contract of coexistence exists in place of state sovereignty. It argues that such a narrative, which is defined by contingency, indeterminacy and relationality, offers alternatives approaches to political praxis and justice.

Paper long abstract:

In 1991, following the rupture of civil war, in which the historical trajectory of Somalia as a nation ground to a halt, the 'Republic of Somaliland' emerged from the rubble. Amongst the contingency and singularity of an evental moment, northern Somali communities reclaimed a long-forgotten identity as the basis for the creation of a new polity, and 'Somaliland' emerged from the wilderness as a self-determination project lacking future direction or sovereign legitimacy. This paper will look at the atypical form of national narrative that emerged within the context of this unusual experiment in state-building, in which the polity formed through social contract, experimentation, relative international isolation and the absence of sovereignty. It will demonstrate that, rather than an organised, top-down process aimed at creating a coherent story of unity through the instruments of governance and culture, Somaliland's national narrative formation instead emerged in a bottom-up and pre-figurative fashion, in which abandoned past political possibilities arose in the consciousness of ordinary citizens as a political programme of hope and justice, with memory serving as a political force binding groups to peaceful coexistence. In short, what materialised was less a 'national narrative' than what Walter Benjamin called a 'weak messianic power', in which the past imposes itself on the present, opening up new political avenues and normative possibilities towards the future—one that annihilates liberal-universalist narratives of linear history. It will draw from Benjamin's alternative conception of history to demonstrate the uniqueness of Somaliland's political relationship to its history, one that is bottom-up, contingent, indeterminate, relational and concrete.