(the teleological unfolding of an essence), to follow such a strategy of structural periodisation is to understand African history simply in terms of continuities and changes in the world economy or world configurations determined in the West, at the level of empire. Africa is consequently thought of as a victim of (or, at best, as simply reacting to) events taking place elsewhere, so that African agency disappears from thought. In this context it should be noted that historicism does not simply consist of the simple idea of linear development. Rather, linear development presupposes historical determinism, the idea that the past determines the present. A notion of causality, of necessity, is therefore at the core of historicism, as well as the view that history is reducible to time, so that, as Marx put it, ‘the tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living’ (Marx, 1852a: 96).
My aim in this book is rather to attempt to think history in a way that foregrounds the political subjectivity of African people and thereby makes it thinkable. It is an attempt at periodisation in terms of limits to thought and their overcoming. For this to be possible, the core of the organising principle of periodisation must be distinct sequences (of state or excessive subjectivities) along with the socially located experiences or singularities that gave birth to them. Emancipatory politics in particular can only be understood as a sequence limited in time or, as Badiou puts it, only as a ‘singular trace where the truth of a collective situation sees the light of day. But there exists no principle of linkage between this trace and those which had preceded it’ (Badiou, 1992: 234, my translation). In other words, because it is concerned with imposing regularity on time (past, present and also future), history sees time as continuous and thereby conflates the subjective with the objective, with the result that it effaces the exceptional and the irregular. History is concerned with establishing a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ and with affirming that the relation between the two is an objective one, understandable through the deployment of scientific protocols. It amounts in fact to a state mode of thinking, for this mode always ‘objectifies’ subjectivity; thus, in Lazarus’s formulation, ‘history is a thought-relation-of-the-state’ (1996: 17). On the other hand, different emancipatory modes of politics understood as singular subjectivities are only thinkable as discontinuous sequences. As Badiou puts it, if, as is usually the case, we consider history as continuous, ‘there is a history of states but there is no history of politics’ (1992: 234, my translation). In brief, what are usually said to be historical periods are continuous structural and expressive subjective historical sequences of state or imperial politics (the politics of power), whereas emancipatory politics are always discontinuous, singular and purely subjective affirmations that can only be understood in terms of themselves. Shifting from understanding historical continuities to understanding discontinuities is not an easy endeavour. In fact, Foucault (2003a: 55) warns us that ‘establishing discontinuities is not an easy task for history in general. And it is certainly even less so for the history of thought’7. What, then, are the difficulties?
The fundamental theoretical problem here concerns that posed by Hegel, who understood history in terms of subjectivity but for whom this process amounted to the unfolding of the ethical ‘Idea’ – hence his adherence to an essence or subject of history (realised in his case in the state8). A different philosophy of the Idea is necessary and it should be apparent that an Idea only exists, is only actualised, through the actions of people who affirm it; we shall see in a later chapter that this is precisely how Frantz Fanon understands the nation, for example. Badiou argues that the Idea must be understood as ‘the affirmation that a new truth is historically possible’ (2009d: 201), while simultaneously insisting on ‘the primacy of the Idea as practice’ (2013f, 14 November 2012, p. 9, my translation). A discontinuous history of politics, therefore, must be understood in terms of changing subjectivities in order to avoid collapsing into historicism, whether of the ‘materialist’ or ‘idealist’ variety. I assess below how Lazarus tries to overcome this problem through his work on time and especially his assessment of Marc Bloch. His solution to the problem posed by Hegel is to understand the historical thought of politics as not always in existence,9 as discontinuous rather than continuous, as sequential and rare, and as composed of subjective political sequences. This follows, of course, from understanding emancipatory politics as excessive to what is considered to be normal or habitual, what is referred to by sociologists as ‘culture’. In particular, Lazarus identifies historical ‘modes of politics’ that are sequential, but all sequences do not necessarily point to the existence of distinct modes.
While changes in objective conditions (of accumulation, for example) have produced important effects on political subjectivities, particularly as they have always been the object of state thought, these subjectivities were also influenced, arguably at times even more fundamentally, by changes in modes of thought and politics expressed in popular struggles of various kinds. Particularly important here are the effects of political ‘events’, in Badiou’s sense of the term, during which emancipatory politics of affirmation are able to see the light of day for shorter or longer periods. Badiou (2009a) outlines three distinct novel evental subjectivities which emanate from any event: fidelity, reaction and obscurity. These three subjective dispositions can also be used to understand the limits of sequences and will be referred to here in order to delineate some of the major sequences in African history that are clearly defined by emancipatory events. More minor sequences, not necessarily continental in their consequences, will only be noted in passing.
That emancipatory politics are always sequential and rare (Lazarus, 1996) does not necessarily diminish their impact, the extent of which ultimately depends on asserting and maintaining a fidelity to events; it is such a fidelity, enabling what Badiou calls a maximal consequence, which creates a strong singularity or event (Badiou, 2008). In the context of African struggles for freedom, at least three different forms of historical event can be elucidated that unfolded as pure thought over limited periods: humanistic struggles such as the Saint-Domingue/Haiti Revolution in the 18th century; national liberation struggles in the 1950s–1960s, and ‘people’s struggles’ from the 1980s to the present.10 Fidelity to such events was usually overcome as subjectivities became saturated and gradually fell back in each case into new state political subjectivities, as they were transformed from pure thought and pure affirmation into social categories: the first into kingdoms, the second into nation-states, and the third into civil society. In this way, the purely subjective eventually became ‘objectified’ or ‘socialised’.
Such objectification amounts to a collapse into state subjectivities and ultimately has meant the reassertion of a reactive (and obscure) subjectivity occasioned by the inability to maintain an affirmation of purely subjective politics.11 This process is what is usually referred to as ‘depoliticisation’. Thus, state politics reassert themselves because of the gradual linking of politics to social categories, usually in an ‘expressive’ relation, as emancipatory thought gradually fades away; this is what Lazarus (1996) refers to as a process of ‘saturation’. This insight is particularly useful and can be investigated through an analysis of the three main emancipatory political sequences in modern African history considered in this, the first part of this book. My main concern, therefore, is fundamentally a methodological one.
It is mainly because of the importance of thinking about politics as excessive subjectivities beyond the realm of state subjectivity, of detaching politics from the state, that Badiou’s philosophy of subjective militancy is of interest to Africa. On the African continent our manner of thinking politics has, since independence, been overwhelmingly dominated by different forms of liberalism, for all of which the state is the sole legitimate focus of politics.12 This liberal conception has revolved around the idea that all politics concerns conflicts of interest and that the state manages such conflicts in the interest of all or of a class that rules. ‘Political society’ – organised interests at the level of the state itself – is the sole legitimate arena in which the conflict of interests can play itself out. That such organised interests are also said to operate within ‘civil society’ does not alter this perspective. For liberalism, ‘political society’ simply is the state.13 This idea has permeated so far into African political thinking that it has become difficult to conceive of an opposition
