Au-delà des relations internationales classiques, le processus de mondialisation mobilise quantité d'acteurs économiques, sociaux et culturels, individuels et collectifs, qui agissent dans l'espace mondial. Nous étudions ensemble, Africains, Latino-américains et Européens, comment il en dérive de nouvelles relations internationales. Ce cours prend sa source dans les approches sociologique et historique françaises des relations internationales, comme celles promues en Afrique et en Amérique latine. Bertrand Badie, Marie-Françoise Durand, Delphine Allès, Atta El Battahani, Carlos Milani, Gaïdz Minassian, Papa Samba Ndiaye, Karen Smith, Folashadé Soule-Kohndou.
Identités en Afrique - Atta El Battahani
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来自 Sciences Po 的课程
Afrique et mondialisation, regards croisés
52 个评分
从本节课中
Identités
Avec Bertrand Badie, Atta El Battahani et Papa Samba Ndiaye. | L’identité est une notion à revoir et à considérer comme une construction sociale et politique.
与讲师见面
Bertrand BadieProfessor
Marie-Françoise DurandProfessor
Ladies and gentlemen, good day.
I would like to talk about identity in Africa
I know identity is a tricky subject
- and without going into much
conceptual debates and definitions,
identity in general and in brief
refers to some of attributes
distinguishing a subject or an object from others.
So from the beginning, then we have
the concept of “the other”.
With regards to physical objects,
these attributes
can be empirically verified and tested.
While as for human subjects and societies,
these attributes are either real or imagined,
or can be both, combination of both
defining human societies.
So what is African identity?
Is there one African identity,
one or many African identities?
What is the index of attributes
from which we draw traits than define “African”?
Is it race and color, as Aimé Césaire,
Léopold Senghor told as in the Negritude?
“Black is beautiful”?
Is it multiracial as Nelson Mandela
has worked hard to achieve it?
Or should we go along the lines with Ali Mazrui,
in calling of multiple marginality,
taking Sudan as a case for Africa?
The case of the Sudan is interesting in that
Sudan really represents Africa,
it is multi-ethnic, multi-tribal,
multi-religious, multi-cultural
and also is a test case showing us
how identity is fluid, constructed,
contested and shaped
over history by political,
religious, economic movement and factors.
For years, Sudan received
population movements, Arab tribes moving in,
people migrating from West Africa,
settling and mixing with the indigenous people.
British colonial administrators adopted
different administrative systems on the country,
and after independence,
political elites in Sudan
vide/rival and struggled among themselves
on the issue on how to define Sudanese?
Should ethnicity be taken at the index
for defining Sudanese
and which kind of ethnicity?
Is it Arabism or Africanism?
Should religion be the basis for that?
Should culture be the basis for that?
Sudanese intellectuals and politicians
came with a number of “solutions”
for these chronic identity problems in the Sudan.
For example, poets
like Mohamed Ahmed al-Mahjoub,
took the line of aligning the Sudanese identity
with Arabism in his poems.
On the other hand, Mohamed Muftah al-Fitouri
thought of Sudan as part of Africa
and he celebrated Africa in his poems:
“Lover from Africa”, “Remember me Africa”,
“The songs for Africa”,
these are all indications for him.
But in between them,
we have also those who wanted to reconcile
these various elements
into one united harmonious whole.
Mohamed AbdelHai a poet who also
allowed “Al-Awada li Sennar”
- The return to Sennar -.
Sennar was the historical kingdom
where Arabs, and Africans and other groups all
coexisted together and lived in harmony.
While poets use words,
unfortunately politicians use weapons.
And in this process,
identity has become a matter for
instrumentalization by competing political groups.
Each vying rival for power, mobilizing
his or her constituency on the basis
for either ethnicity or religion or culture.
It is the sad and long history
that ended with the break-up of the Sudan in 2011.
In its own right,
globalization widened the scope
for the interaction between different cultures
and different identities:
it enhanced the process of interaction
to the extent that sometimes
it leads to fear, tension and conflict,
but at other times as well also
it leads to understanding,
accommodation and coexistence.
So there is no clear
cut in for the process of globalization
in dealing with cultural and
different identities.
There is no blueprint, there is no template
whereby globalization
can handle these various
contestations among identities,
but certainly globalization
provides tools,
provides amenities for politicians,
for intellectuals, for representatives
of different cultures and different identities
to meet and to interact.
And in real world, sometimes,
politicians and activists
make use of these tools
availed by globalization
to mobilize their communities
at their own basis, sectarian basis,
religious basis,
this instrumentalizing identity
for short term gains.
We have the example,
in Africa and in the Middle East,
of the mini tv satellites
fanning certain ideologies and certain creeds.
But again to be fair,
these activists and politicians instrumentalizing
identity for short term gains,
they do not do that in a vacuum.
There must be concrete cases
of poverty, exclusion and fear
that politicians and activists worked upon
and use as raw material
for mobilization in their tactics.
So to undercut instrumentalization
of identity by politicians and activists,
we need to deal with the root causes
that gave place in the first place
for communities to attach
themselves to such leaders and such activists.
How is Africa fitting in this
globalization debate on identity?
Given the position of Africa
among the other continents,
some Africans are concerned
that if Africa identity is not
defined and maintained,
African identity would be swept away
and Africans would be reduced to
nameless actors.
I don’t agree with this believing that
Africa has the richest stock of culture,
of traditions, of symbols
that can project and can
portray an African identity.
But the concern is there
- given the interactions
among identities and cultures
engendered by the globalization processes -
managing the process of identity
interactions and complexity,
is it or not a mutually
exclusive process ? is either that ?
one can keep his or her
micro identity and
at the same time reconcile it
with a national identity;
either or his or her nation
or even with the worldwide.
So one can have an African identity
and at the same time
a citizen of the world at large.
Thank you.
