Short Abstract

When the body at the centre of a regime begins to fail, does the sovereign still govern or does the anticipation of his end become the government itself? This panel brings together political science, anthropology, philosophy and literary studies around ageing power and political finitude in Africa.

Long Abstract

Across sub-Saharan Africa, many rulers who took power in the 1970s and 1980s are still in power. Others have entered the race more recently, already at a very advanced age. Despite their age, and the fatigue that comes with it, they continue to present themselves as presiding over futures they will most certainly not live to see. Yet, beneath these appearances of permanence, both those around them and local populations know that the end is approaching, that it may come at any moment. It is this suspended moment of waiting – and the relations of power that emerge from it, as the biological finitude of the sovereign becomes increasingly difficult to reconcile with the apparent continuity of the political order – that this panel seeks to capture across different African settings.

This panel attempts at shifting the attention to the terminal situation of political rule itself: that period in which the end of a reign becomes foreseeable and expected, without yet becoming an event. More specifically, we ask two related questions. First, how does this suspended moment shape the ways in which political transition is governed? And second, how is this moment experienced in everyday life – through rumours, fears, expectations, anticipations, and political imaginaries?

Drawing on political science, anthropology, philosophy and literary thought, the panel explores the tensions between the sovereign body and the political body; continuity and finitude; presence, absence and political visibility; and between the government of the end from above and its anticipation from below.

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