Abstract
One of the distinct strands of the broader international relations discourse on Africa’s “failure” is a rather contemptuous attitude toward and analysis of anti-colonialism and decolonization. Much of the mainstream scholarship about postcolonial African statehood and sovereignty implicitly and at times explicitly endorses colonial rule, if only on pragmatic grounds, apparently lamenting the rushed and ill-informed process of independence. This chapter takes up IR’s problem with time, temporality and coloniality. Part of the discipline’s problem with Africa, it suggests, is both its failure to understand the centrality of colonialism and its legacies to the making of the modern international order, and to theoretically consider colonialism and anti-colonialism, as experiences and relationships of international relations which demand serious critical reflection. Focusing specifically on Portuguese colonialism in Africa, and African anticolonial responses to it, the chapter makes two important claims: first, that it is the discipline’s dominant conceptions of time and temporality that serve to marginalize and contain the colonial experience and, second, that the thought and practice of African anti-colonialism may be understood as a radical critique and rejection of international relation’s dominant conceptions of temporality. It is only by taking these two vectors of enunciation seriously that we may begin to appreciate not only the Eurocentrism of IR but also imagine the condition of possibility for rethinking IR for Africa.
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Notes
- 1.
A sample of a long-entrenched tradition includes Ezrow and Frantz (2013), Brookings Institute (2011), Maedla et al. (2011), Naudé et al. (2011), Robb-Jackson (2010), Ndulo and Grieco (2010), Ingram (2010), Stewart and Brown (2009), European Report on Development (2009), Starr (2009), Englebert (2009), Bates (2008), Andersen et al. (2007), Rotberg (2006), Kaarsholm (2006), Herbst (1997), Reno (1997).
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
See Trüper et al. (2015) and chapters in their volume for a discussion of the plurality of forms teleology took in European thought from the eighteenth century onward.
- 5.
On the significance of Salazar’s brief role as Minister of Colonies before assuming the role of Prime Minister, see Alexandre (1993).
- 6.
This and all other quotations from sources in Portuguese are my own translation.
- 7.
Caetano was a Professor of Law, Minister of the Colonies between 1944 and 1947, President of the Câmara Corporativa 1955–1958, and succeeded Salazar as Prime Minister of the Estado Novo in 1968.
- 8.
Moreira was Professor and Director of the Instituto Superior de Estudos Ultramarinos, and from 1959 Under-Secretary of State for Overseas Administration, and Overseas Minister between 1961 and 1963.
- 9.
Presumably referring to the História trágico-marítima, a compilation of accounts of shipwrecks during the sixteenth century, published in 1735 and 1736 by Bernardo Gomes de Brito.
- 10.
This was a return to the terminology employed previously by the monarchical regime of the 1920s. In fact, Torgal reports that Salazar continued into the late 1950s to use the term colony and confirmed in an interview in 1957: “We believe that there are races, decaying or backwards, as you prefer, in relation to which we uphold the duty to call them to civilisation” “A atmosfera mundial e os problemas nacionais” discurso proferido em 1 de Novembro de 1957, in Salazar (1967); cited in Torgal (2007, p. 68).
- 11.
The Câmara Corporativa was a political organ of the government of the Estado Novo , representative of various corporate organizations, which had a consultative role discussing the formulation of legislature within the National Assembly.
- 12.
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Acknowledgments
An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the Millennium conference, London 2016. Thanks to Zuba, fellow panelists, and members of the audience for a great discussion. Very many thanks to Zuba and Marta for being such wonderful and patient editors. Thanks to Elen Stokes, Mustapha Pasha, Rui Lopes, and Maureen Woodhall for helpful discussions. Very many thanks to Irene Alexandra Neto and the Fundação Dr. António Agostinho Neto for permission to cite the poems of Agostinho Neto. This chapter contributes to the project Amílcar Cabral, da História Política às Políticas da Memória funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal (PTDC/EPH-HIS/6964/2014)
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Gruffydd Jones, B. (2018). African Anti-colonialism in International Relations: Against the Time of Forgetting. In: Iñiguez de Heredia, M., Wai, Z. (eds) Recentering Africa in International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67510-7_8
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