Week 6—Colonial subjects and national citizens

Week 6—Colonial subjects and national citizens

Main reading: Ekeh (1975); Mamdani (2001)

Other reading: Cohn (1987)

In this week, we negin to examine a new perspective on the nature of civil society (or what Habermas might call the public sphere). I would argue that the best and most elaborated expression of this perspective is found in the works of Partha Chatterjee, but several others anticipate elements of his argument, including Ekeh (1975) and Mamdani (2001), whose argument is presented fully in his book, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (1996).

Of these two thinkers, whose argument carries more weight for you? Why? Do you think they agree or disagree, and why?

References

Cohn, Bernard S. 1987. “The census, social structure, and objectification in South Asia.” In An anthropologist among the historians and other essays, 224–54. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Ekeh, Peter P. 1975. “Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa: A Theoretical Statement.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 17 (1): 91–112. https://www.jstor.org/stable/178372.

Mamdani, Mahmood. 1996. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

———. 2001. “Beyond Settler and Native as Political Identities: Overcoming the Political Legacy of Colonialism.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 43 (04): 651–64.