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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.