Sovereignty, Life and Death in Postcolonial Africa

The current social and political experience in Africa could lead us to wonder whether the entire continent is, to borrow a phrase from Achille Mbembe, struggling to emerge “from the great darkness.” While the representation of a “nightmarish Africa” has gained acceptance, supporting this very problematic stereotype remains out of the question. Instead, it is important to produce a realistic and objective examination of the facts, which demonstrates that even as Africa evolves, the tangible signs of liberation from its long “nightmare” are slow in coming. Wars and conflicts continue to hinder development. Unemployment in its various forms as well as underemployment remain ever-present. On the political front, democratic change and consolidation are blocked because various forms of authoritarianism continue to harden and seek desperately to survive. In this presentation, I position myself at the crossroads of biopolitics, necropolitics, and thanatopolitics to propose the figure of the homo expendibilis as the new norm for modernity in Africa. It will be my ultimate contention that the figure of the homo expendibilis stands out as as a new means of interpreting the marginal bodies and precarious lives in contemporary Africa, in so far as it summarizes the relation between sovereignty, life and death on the continent.



Short Bio

A graduate of the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 and the University of Pennsylvania, Hervé Tchumkam is Professor of French and Postcolonial Studies and Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor at Southern Methodist University. Trained as a comparatist, his areas of interest include Comparative Postcolonial Studies, Literary Theory, Political Philosophy, African Studies and Human Rights. He is the author of State Power, Stigmatization and Youth Resistance Cultures in the French Banlieues: Uncanny Citizenship (Lexington Books, 2015) and, the co-author with Alexie Tcheuyap of Avoir peur. Insécurité et roman en Afrique Francophone (Presses de l’université Laval, 2019). His most recent monograph, Precarious Lives and Marginal Bodies in North Africa: Homo Expendibilis (Lexington Books) was published in 2021.

Program in African Studies | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies

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