Radical Nationalism in British West Africa, 1945-60

[摘要] This study confronts the problem of nationalism at a particular historical juncture inBritish West Africa from a reconstituted methodological and epistemological frameworkin the attempt to provide further understanding of the phenomenon of nationalism and ofthe process that ended empire in British West Africa, including a historicizedreflection on the terms in which empire ended and the relationship to the crises ofdemocracy and citizenship in post-independent Africa. It explores aspects of thecolonialism/citizenship interface, and the legacies, continuities, and discontinuities. Itseeks to examine colonial discursive practices of community & citizenship, in particular,aspects of the political and cultural contestations in the public sphere over communityand notions of citizenship between African ethnopolitical entrepreneurs and colonialsocial radicals, and their outcome. It inquires into how they and their organizationsconstructed their arguments and actions relative to each other, and what they were doingwith the categories of, i.e., ;;race,” ;;ethnicity,” ;;gender,” ;;class,” ;;religion,” and to whateffects. The discourse of ethnopolitical entrepreneurs and of colonial social radicals isconceptualized as the master-discourse and the supplementary-discourse, respectively,following Homi Bhabha’s conceptualization. The categories and analytical conceptsapplied in this study, including the category of social radicalism, are problematized. Thestudy seeks to reconceptualize them in processual and relational terms and to apply themas coordinates. This work is predicated on the organizing principle of conflict to capturepoints of conjuncture and of continuity in transition.In reconstituting the narrative of nationalism in this period, the study alsoexplores the category of the ;;communist” which was added to British imperialistdiscourse and applied to colonial social radicals and anybody that British officialdom didnot like. It attempts to examine the effects of British imperial anti-communist frameworkon the dynamics of the social, political, and cultural imaginings and contestations of community and citizenship and the process that ended in precipitous decolonization. Itseeks to reveal the effects of officialdom’s categorization and anti-communist grid on thesocial, legal, and political contexts that defined the Independence Constitutions and to filla lacuna in the historiography of nationalism in pre-independence British West Africa.

[发布机构] University of Michigan

[效力级别] History (General)

[关键词] Radical Nationalism;History (General);Social Sciences;History