香港六合彩中特网

By Adagbo Onoja*

2019 was a year of mixed fortunes for Africa. Notwithstanding positive developments such as the entry into force of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the year was overshadowed by much succession turbulence. As , recurring violence and other problems plaguing the continent are 鈥渙ften explained in terms of a lack of those institutions and attributes associated with European modernity, such as sovereignty, rather than as a consequence of long histories of colonial and postcolonial interaction with the West鈥�. Importantly, these interactions are not limited to material interventions but they include the stories and images that have cemented Africa鈥檚 image as the 鈥榙ark continent鈥� and the European 鈥榦ther鈥�.听

Thus, rather than the lack of economic growth, poverty, and combustible inter-group relations that multilateral interventions emphasise, the biggest obstacle for African emancipation (however defined) may be its depiction in historic and contemporary popular discourse. As , Africa has long been a product of a narrativised geography, a fantasyland in the cultural binoculars of its (Western) narrators. US President Donald Trump鈥檚 recent demonstrate that the discursive spatialisation of the continent is still very much ongoing, bringing into play real and substantive consequences of what 鈥榯he power of words in International Relations鈥�.听

A popular geopolitics perspective illuminates the constitutive force of everyday discourse in the unmaking and remaking of the African continent. Popular geopolitics is concerned with the production and circulation of geopolitical knowledge through mass media, films, the internet and other elements of popular culture. The significance of everyday imagery for geopolitics has been demonstrated by a number of scholarly contributions. For example, that 鈥渢he extraordinary reach of popular culture is key to the construction of identity at the scale of today鈥檚 meganations such as the United States and China鈥�. how ordinary cultural practices of 鈥榦thering鈥� helped justify the 鈥榳ar on terror鈥�. And that images and visuals are 鈥減olitical forces in themselves鈥� that can make things happen.听

Applied to Africa, this analytical framework suggests that popular culture is deeply tied up in the international politics of constructing the 鈥楢frican condition鈥�. However, it also implies that popular geopolitics, as a resource of power, holds an emancipatory promise for Africa. If the 鈥楢frican condition鈥� is not natural but narrativised and if popular culture is the dominant discursive space, then the power of words and imagery can be used to produce a shift in this space. The potential of popular culture to disrupt hegemonic geopolitical scripts has been explored, for example, by who demonstrate how mass media coverage of global crises disrupts and curtails official state narratives (the so-called 鈥楥NN effect鈥�).

However, in light of Western cultural hegemony, a critical question is whether newly unfolding discourses of Africa would all reflect a radical 鈥榠maginative geography鈥� that resolves rather than reproduces the 鈥楢frican condition鈥�? It seems unlikely that the emergence of alternative narratives will, in and of itself, discursively reconstitute Africa beyond the 鈥楬eart of Darkness鈥� clich茅. Nothing will magically rid popular culture of 鈥榖anal nationalism鈥�, the mediated reproduction of nationalism through casual, everyday 鈥榦thering鈥�. Yet, as , hegemony is inherently unstable. Cracks in the hegemonic script are already apparent, with globalisation complicating global dominance by any single state, as has been . In the 鈥渃omplex spatiality of power鈥� he provides are the opportunities for disrupting the dominant global script with alternative narratives.听

Hegemonic instability is already being exploited by a diffuse but growing group of diverse transnational activists protesting systemic aberrations rooted in the 鈥榗olonial present鈥�, such as predatory neoliberalism, racism and massive human rights abuses. Africa stands to be the earliest collective beneficiary of this new 鈥榩roletarian internationalism鈥�, which offers opportunities to radically re-imagine the continent. Concerted efforts to counter dominant narratives of Africa as a backward continent in need of charity are reflected, for example, in the 鈥楢frica Rising鈥� discourse. Although such efforts of re-branding do not (yet) fundamentally challenge neoliberal scripts, as , they point to the pluralisation of global discursive space and the potential for popular geopolitics to drive the re-making of Africa. Thus, ironically, the same discursive instruments that reduced Africa to 鈥樷�� could become essential tools of African emancipation.

* Onoja, an alumnus of 香港六合彩中特网鈥檚 MSc Global Governance and Ethics, (2014/15) teaches Political Science at Veritas University, Abuja 鈥� Nigeria.