Talkative Polity
CAMBRIDGE CENTRE OF AFRICAN STUDIES SERIES
Series editors: Derek R. Peterson, Harri Englund, and Christopher Warnes
The University of Cambridge is home to one of the world’s leading centers of African studies. It organizes conferences, runs a weekly seminar series, hosts a specialist library, coordinates advanced graduate studies, and facilitates research by Cambridge- and Africa-based academics. The Cambridge Centre of African Studies Series publishes work that emanates from this rich intellectual life. The series fosters dialogue across a broad range of disciplines in African studies and between scholars based in Africa and elsewhere.
Derek R. Peterson, ed.
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Religion, Media, and Marginality in Modern Africa
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Florence Brisset-Foucault
Talkative Polity: Radio, Domination, and Citizenship in Uganda
Talkative Polity
Radio, Domination, and Citizenship in Uganda
Florence Brisset-Foucault
Ohio University Press
Athens
Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
© 2019 by Ohio University Press
All rights reserved
Cover: Audience and presenter at Simbawo Akatii, New Life Bar, Nakulabye, Kampala, 2008. (Photo by author.)
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Brisset-Foucault, Florence, 1981- author.
Title: Talkative polity : radio, domination, and citizenship in Uganda / Florence Brisset-Foucault.
Other titles: Cambridge Centre of African Studies series.
Description: Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press, 2019. | Series: Cambridge centre of African studies series | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019004315| ISBN 9780821423776 (hc : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780821446669 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Political participation--Uganda. | Radio talk shows--Political aspects--Uganda. | Radio in politics--Uganda. | Uganda--Politics and government--21st century.
Classification: LCC JQ2951.A91 B75 2019 | DDC 324.096761090511--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019004315
This book is dedicated to the memory of my mother, Dominique Eiferman.
What is so perilous, then, in the fact that people speak, and that their speech proliferates? Where is the danger in that?
—Michel Foucault, Orders of Discourse
How the wine shop is the People’s Parliament.
—Honoré de Balzac, The Peasants
Contents
ONE: The Ebimeeza and the Political Culture of Kampala’s Upper Class
TWO: The Political Economy of Radio Speech
THREE: The Ebimeeza and the Partisanization of Ugandan Politics
FOUR: The Ebimeeza as a Ganda Patriotic Stage
FIVE: “A Constituency in Itself”: Talk Radio and the Redefinition of Political Leadership
SIX: Taming Speech: The State’s Suitable Citizens
SEVEN: The Bureaucratization of the Ebimeeza and the Desire for Discipline
