Convenor(s)
Blanc Guillaume / Musée du quai Branly / IMAF
Vezzadini Elena / University of Bergen / IMAF
While historians of nationalism have largely identified the cultural dimensions inherent in the social and political processes of nation-building, African national identities are described above all as the product of an elitist process that touches the daily lives and hearts of common people only lightly. To counter this reductive interpretation of African nationalism by further developing a perspective that has contributed to an “emotional turn” in social sciences and humanities in the past ten years (William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein, Peter Stearns), this panel aims to analyse nation not so much as a political state, but as a state of emotions. Treating national sentiment as a subject worthy of study means first of all detecting and deciphering how African nations are sung, read, travelled through, or contemplated, which in turn leads to mapping the structure of feelings through which individuals perceive and refashion the nation. The second aim of this panel is to cast light on the plurality of the “communities of affect” that constantly negotiate the norms and values of national life within a certain nation-state. Finally, from a close reading of both the sources produced by national governments and those relating to literature, music, sport, nature, or food, we shall treat emotions not only as a tool for studying the nation, but also as a means of recasting an alternative history of national identifications in Africa.
Nation des affects : les émotions comme outil analytique des identifications nationales en Afrique (19e – 20e siècles)
Si les historiens ont désormais démontré les dimensions culturelles inhérentes au processus social et politique de construction de la nation, les identités nationales africaines sont quant à elles avant tout décrites comme issues d’un processus élitiste qui toucherait faiblement et le quotidien, et le cœur des hommes. À l’opposé de cette lecture réductrice du nationalisme africain, en intégrant la perspective qui selon certains historiens participe depuis dix ans à un « emotional turn » (William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein, Peter Stearns), ce panel propose d’analyser la nation non pas simplement comme un État politique, mais aussi comme un état d’âme. Considérer le sentiment national comme objet d’étude vise d’abord à saisir la façon dont la nation africaine est chantée, lue, parcourue ou contemplée et, alors, à retracer les structures émotionnelles par le biais desquels les individus perçoivent et façonnent la nation. Ce panel cherche ensuite à interroger la pluralité des « communautés affectives » autour desquelles, à l’intérieur d’un certain État-nation, se négocient sans cesse les normes et les valeurs de la vie nationale. Enfin, par la relecture des sources produites par les administrations nationales, mais aussi l’examen des sources afférentes à la littérature, la musique, le sport, la nature ou la nourriture, l’on s’intéressera à l’émotion comme mode d’étude de l’objet « nation » et, ainsi, comme biais par lequel lire et écrire une autre histoire africaine de la nation.
Schler Lynn / Ben Gurion University of the Negev
Longing for Home: The Imagined Nation of Nigerian Seamen in the Era of Decolonisation
To date, the historiography of nationalism in Africa is largely focused on the anti-colonial agitation led by westernised elites and the establishment independent nation-states within the borders of former colonial territories. This literature is confined to a narrow definition of nationalism and the ways in which the postcolonial nation-state was imagined in the era of decolonization. This paper seeks to broaden our understanding of how nationalist identifications took shape among the working classes. By focusing on the history of Nigerian seamen in the transition to independence, this paper reveals that Nigerian seamen’s expressions of nationalist consciousness bore little resemblance to elite visions. Nationalist identification was inherently tied to the hopes and aspirations seamen had for their material lives. For seamen, “becoming Nigerian” represented a kind of homecoming, and a promise for more just working conditions onboard postcolonial ships. The paper will look at seamen’s anticipation of this homecoming, and the sentiments and desires it aroused among them. It will be seen that seamen’s hopes were soon replaced by expressions of disappointment and anger when the postcolonial reality resulted in a deterioration of the terms of their employment. Seamen’s testimonies reveal the ways in which everyday Africans invested their own sentiments into the promise of nationalism, and these often bore little resemblance to elite visions of the postcolonial state.
Riggan Jennifer / Arcadia University
From Promise to Punishment: Quotidian Nationalism, State Coercion and the Erosion of Effervescence in Eritrea
Immediately following Eritrea’s 1991 independence from Ethiopia, the ruling and liberating party galvanized popular effervescence surrounding the country’s thirty-year “liberation struggle” and transformed these sentiments into a cohesive nationalism that is rare in newly-independent African nations. The party cultivated symbols, narratives and performances of the nation that linked the struggle to ordinary Eritreans’ lives. This nation- making project that centered on the quotidian produced powerful affective attachments to the nation by validating and valorizing personal experiences of sacrifice and suffering during the war. A key component of this project is the national service program, which obligates Eritrean men and women to undergo six months of military training and twelve months of service without pay, typically in the military. One of the goals of service is to connect Eritreans emotionally to the values of the struggle. Over the last fifteen years, as the government has become increasingly authoritarian the affective stance of Eritreans towards the state, embodied by the ruling party, has shifted. A key reason for this shift is that, since 1998, national service has become permanent, turning what was supposed to enhance effervescent attachments to the nation and the struggle into an experience that is resented, feared and seen as an endless condition of servitude, hardship and state punishment. What has emerged in Eritrea is a form of quotidian nationalism that inverts the meaning of sacrifice and struggle without unraveling their centrality to Eritrean nationalism. Eritreans sacrifice and suffer not for the state, but because of the state. Thus the affective climate of hardship no longer coalesces around the effervescent promises of independence, but instead reinvents Eritrean nationalism and decenters the ruling party.
Lawson Denis / Centre Montesquieu de Recherche Politique (CMRP : Université de Bordeaux)
De la « Nation » béninoise comme un processus « spirituellement » chanté, un rituel historique de construction et de conservation.
Un essai de définition de la nation comme un tout homogène linguistique, culturel et historique exclu d’avance l’idée même de la nation africaine. Car de l’Afrique nationale il y a des hétérogénéités culturelles, linguistiques et historiques, qui justifient parfois d’un certain point de vue son instabilité et ses crises. En revanche la nation pensée comme un « souffle irrationnel » commun à un ensemble d’individus, réintègre l’idée d’une identification nationale africaine dont la dimension politique est de l’ordre de l’émotion (Philippe Braud). Car parce que les individus se sentent liés par un même destin et concernés par une même histoire qui s’écrit, il émerge un processus de production d’une entité (la nation) qui « transcende » les îlots de ressentis culturels, historiques ou linguistiques présents dans un même espace. L’évocation de cette entité est comme une « invocation : verbe et action » qui produit chez chaque individu « un état d’âme » né d’une conscience collective (au-delà de la représentation) de son existence. Elle communique et parle à chacun parce qu’elle est conçue comme un « chant » qui résonne. C’est « l’hymne national » mais aussi l’ensemble des chansons, des rituels adressés aux « dieux » chaque fois que les individus pensent qu’elle va disparaître ou qu’une menace pèse sur elle et qu’il y aura rupture du processus. Enfin, parce que la nation est créatrice de liens affectifs elle contribuera au recul des sentiments proto-nationaux.
En partant d’une expérience empirique dans un contexte ethno régional pluriel (le Bénin), nous montrerons comment la nation est une construction processuelle non nécessairement élitiste faîte de chansons populaires et de rites à sa gloire et à sa survie. Et, en période de crises ou de tensions la nation béninoise déclenchera un élan « de sublimation, de Bénin passion » collectivement éprouvé ; un sentiment d’appartenance renouvelé. Il y a comme une interaction. L’entité étant émotionnellement conçue elle produit de ce fait en retour un effet : elle rend sensible à elle.
Tayeb Leila / Northwestern University, Evanston
Between Um Saad and Nalout: National Unity in the Music of Libya’s 2011 Revolution
Much of the popular music produced and circulated during and for Libya’s 2011 revolution called more and less explicitly for “national unity,” articulating the nation in ways that responded both to the conditions of the uprising and to the historical circumstances out of which it emerged. Together, these music performances produced a discursive and sonic project of national unity which was historically contingent: particular to its context and fundamentally temporary. In this paper I investigate patterns in this project, concerned with the following questions: How did music produced during the revolution articulate a contextualized project of national unity? What parameters did these songs set for the nation? Who was marked in and outside of this nation and why? What conditions contributed to the emergence of the discourses expounded in this music and to what did they respond? How has the nation as performed musically shifted in the years since 2011, full as they have been with discursive and military conflict? These performances reflected and have affected how people in and outside of Libya have experienced the 2011 revolution and its aftermath. In examining them, I offer insight into the affective dimensions of revolution and the contemporary production of a precarious Libyan nation-state.