Couté la libeté li palé nan coeur nou tous! [Listen to freedom; it speaks in all our hearts!]
– Zamba Boukman Dutty, Bois Caïman, Saint-Domingue, 15 August 1791
It is to the mute, to the stutterer, to the stranger, that the poem must be offered, and not to the chatterbox, to the grammarian, or to the nationalist. It is to the proletarian – whom Marx defined as those who have nothing except their own body capable of work – that we must give the entire earth, as well as all the books, and all the music, and all the paintings, and all the sciences. What is more, it is to them, to the proletarians in all their forms, that the poem of communism must be offered.
– Alain Badiou, ‘Poetry and Communism’, 2014
The people and the people alone are the motive force in the making of world history ... The masses are the real heroes, while we ourselves are often childish and ignorant, and without this understanding it is impossible to acquire even the most rudimentary knowledge.
– Mao Zedong, The Little Red Book
Except for cases of genocide or the violent reduction of native populations to cultural and social insignificance, the epoch of colonization was not sufficient, at least in Africa, to bring about any significant destruction or degradation of the essential elements of the culture and traditions of the colonized peoples … the problem of a … cultural renaissance is not posed nor could it be posed by the popular masses: indeed they are the bearers of their own culture, they are its source, and, at the same time, they are the only entity truly capable of preserving and creating culture – in a word, of making history.
– Amílcar Cabral, ‘The Role of Culture in the Struggle for Independence’, 1972 (emphasis in original)
If humanity does not work toward its own deployment, toward its own invention, it has no other option but to work toward its own destruction. That which is not under the rule of the Idea will be under the rule of death. The human species cannot be animal-like innocently. Man is that species which needs the Idea in order to inhabit his own world in a reasonable manner.
– Alain Badiou, La Philosophie et l’événement, 2010 (my translation)
Published in South Africa by:
Wits University Press
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Copyright © Michael Neocosmos 2016
Published edition © Wits University Press 2016
First published 2016
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Dedication
I would like to dedicate this work to all our political ancestors on the African continent who sacrificed their personal lives for a world worthy of humanity, and particularly to the memory of Phyllis Naidoo (1928–2013).
Viens, écoute ces mots qui vibrent
Sur les murs du mois de mai
Ils nous disent la certitude
Que tout peut changer un jour
– Georges Moustaki
All I want is equality
For my sister,
My brother,
My people
And me
– Nina Simone
Contents
Foreword by Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba
Introduction: Politics is thought, thought is real, people think
Part 1 Thinking political sequences: From African history to African historical political sequences
1.Theoretical introduction: Understanding historical political sequences
2.From Saint-Domingue to Haiti: The politics of freedom and equality, 1791–1960
3.Are those-who-do-not-count capable of reason? On the limits of historical thought
4.The National Liberation Struggle mode of politics in Africa, 1945–1975
5.The People’s Power mode of politics in South Africa, 1984–1986
6.From national emancipation to national chauvinism in South Africa, 1973–2013
7.Rethinking militancy in the current sequence: Beyond politics as agency
9.Theoretical introduction: Social representation, modes of rule and political prescriptions