Kevin C. Dunn

‘Sons of the Soil’ and Contemporary State Making: autochthony, uncertainty and political violence in Africa

Abstract The employment of autochthony discourses has become a prominent feature of contemporary politics around the world. Autochthony discourses link identity and space, enabling the speaker to establish a direct claim to territory by asserting that one is an original inhabitant, a ‘son of the soil’. Drawing from recent African examples, this contribution argues that the employment of autochthony discourses is an attractive response to the ontological uncertainty around political identities within the postmodern/postcolonial condition. Autochthony discourses can resonate deeply with populations longing for a sense of primal security in the face of uncertainty generated by a variety of sources, from the processes of contemporary globalisation to the collapse of neo-patrimonial structures. Yet this sense of security is inevitably fleeting, given the instability and plasticity of autochthony claims. The contribution examines why these discourses are often characterised by violence, and argues that autochthony is frequently linked to the desire for order inherent in contemporary state making, which invariably relies on multiple manifestations of violence.

Fear of a black planet: anarchy anxieties and postcolonial travel to Africa

Western travel to Africa has historically involved the construction and consumption of African otherness. In the postcolonial era this is most clearly evident in Western tourism to the continent, where Africa is frequently marketed as an exoticised destination to see and consume both ‘nature’ and ‘native’. The Western tourist gaze often requires fixing Africans, both in a spatial site (‘village’) and a temporal site (‘tradition’). Africans on the move (both spatially and temporally) are often seen as threatening to the Western‐established images of Africa, which are grounded in a long‐standing fear of ‘unorded’ and ‘chaotic’ African space. After 11 September and the USAs ‘war on terror’ retributive response, the political implications of these fears are evinced in the writings of Robert Kaplan and his popular ‘coming anarchy’ thesis. The article concludes with a critique of Kaplans work and a discussion of its implications for Africa and African international relations.

Contested State Spaces: African National Parks and the State

Since the ‘linguistic turn’ in International Relations, it is assumed that agents like the state are always effects of discourse and should be ‘decentered’ rather than made the starting point for theory. Yet, most postmodern IR scholarship implicitly assumes a particular conception of the state. This article provides an explicit elaboration of that conceptualization, positing that the state is a discursively produced structural/structuring effect that relies on constant acts of performativity to call it into being. The constituting discourses on the state are never complete or closed, but are always contested, offering spaces for maneuver and resistance. Employing the example of African national parks, this article examines ‘contested state spaces’, those places where officially sanctioned state-making practices are successfully challenged, resisted and replaced by alternatives. The example of African national parks provides a useful way of interrogating state-making practices in the everyday life of international relations.

Imagining Mobutu's Zaïre: The Production and Consumption of Identity in International Relations

When Muhammad Ali climbed into the boxing ring on 30 October 1974 for the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’, he was facing far stronger, bigger and younger George Foreman. It would turn out to be the event that established Ali’s reputation for brilliance as a fighter and a strategist. It was also an event that showed the brilliance of Mobutu Sese Seko (né Joseph-Désiré Mobutu) as an international strategist and politician. After his second coup on 24 November 1965, Mobutu sought to change the Congo’s image under an ‘authenticity’ campaign aimed at reclaiming the nation’s African traditions. The Ali-Foreman fight, the brainchild of an up-and-coming promoter by the name of Don King, put the world’s attention on the Congo, which had by then been renamed Zaïre. For the previous fifteen years, international media attention had focused on the rebellions and political unrest that plagued the Congo. Now Mobutu was presenting a new image. It was the image of a post-colonial Africa, boldly embracing the future while simultaneously grounding itself in an ancestral past. The Ali-Foreman fight can be read as more than an international publicity stunt by a Third World leader. Two of the tactics utilised by Ali to reclaim his title— exploitation of opponents’ weaknesses and perseverance—also became the tools utilised by Mobutu during his more than thirty years in power. He successfully exploited the internal divisions among the domestic opposition, as well as their desire for power and wealth. Mobutu was also able to capitalise on the fears of numerous external actors, whether it be the fear of communism or the loss of economic privileges. Moreover, he outlasted most of his fellow Cold War dictators creating a new image for the Congo by manipulating past discourses, images, and symbols, and by exploiting the weaknesses and fears of other international actors. Just as Ali’s manager had loosened the ropes to give the fighter more room to

“We ARE the Revolution”: Riot Grrrl Press, Girl Empowerment, and DIY Self-Publishing

Punk rock emerged in the late 20th century as a major disruptive force within both the established music scene and the larger capitalist societies of the industrial West. Punk was generally characterized by its anti-status quo disposition, a pronounced do-it-yourself (DIY) ethos, and a desire for disalienation (resistance to the multiple forms of alienation in modern society). These three elements provided actors with tools for political interventions and actions. A significant avenue for DIY intervention was self-publishing, particularly with “zines”—independently created publications, usually handcrafted and photocopied. This essay explores the development of DIY self-publication as it related to Riot Grrrl, a movement that developed in the early 1990s by young women challenging the sexism of North American punk scenes. By focusing on Riot Grrrl Press, this article offers a corrective to mainstream media misrepresentations of the movement, as well as scholarly works on Riot Grrrl that focus almost exclusively on its musical production. As this article argues, the Riot Grrrl punk bands were only one aspect of Riot Grrrl’s overall purpose and goal. At its core, Riot Grrrl was committed to girl empowerment and self-representation. Central to these goals was the creation of alternative media and DIY self-publishing.

Identity, space and the political economy of conflict in Central Africa

This article examines the current war in the Congo (Democratic Republic of; formerly Zaire) by incorporating recent theoretical work from the sub‐fields of International Political Economy (IPE), Identity Theory, and Critical Geopolitics. This article places the current conflict in a larger historic context, emphasising a lengthy tradition of resource extraction, identity formation and spatial definition. The essay argues that existing explanations of the conflict over‐emphasise the supposed greed of the actors involved, without sufficient attention paid to the discursive aspects of the conflict. The essay constructs a theoretical approach that integrates the material and the discursive by exploring how identity and space shape the political economy of violence in the region. The essay concludes with a ‘first cut’ analysis of the crisis in Central Africa utilising this framework, organised along local, regional and global levels of analysis.

There is no such thing as the state: discourse, effect and performativity.

The ‘state’ is one of the foundational concepts in the fields of development studies, yet it is often employed in the literature uncritically, with academics assuming an essentialised presence of the state. This article begins with Roxanne Doty’s blunt and provocative observation: ‘There is no such thing as “the state”’, which forces us to stop and examine closely what it is we are actually seeing when we talk about ‘the state’. This article offers a conception of ‘the state’ as a discursively produced structural/structuring effect that relies on constant acts of performativity to call it into being. Thus, the ‘state’ is understood not as an essentialised entity, but an ongoing process. The article elaborates the 3 core parts of this conceptualisation – discursive construction, structural/structuring effect and performativity – in greater detail, with an eye for possible future avenues of inquiry. The discussion is grounded in empirical examples about state‐making practices related to the creation and maintenance of Uganda’s national parks.

Pussy Rioting: THE NINE LIVES OF THE RIOT GRRRL REVOLUTION

Abstract This essay explores the evolution of the Riot Grrrl movement. A feminist punk movement that profoundly impacted popular culture in the West during the 1990s, Riot Grrrl is generally regarded as an important but short-lived phenomenon. This paper explores the political relevance of Riot Grrrl within both feminism and popular culture, but also debunks the myth that Riot Grrrl faded away by the turn of the century. Exploring specific cases in Russia and Indonesia, the paper illustrates the ways in which Riot Grrrl has become a global movement and remains active today, influencing peoples subjectivity and agency, helping transform people from passive consumers to active feminist cultural producers.

Introduction: In Defense of Identity

Identity is back. The concept of identity has made a remarkable comeback in the social sciences and humanities. In International Relations (IR), many turned to identity-based analysis when the end of the Cold War disrupted the intellectual dominance of (neo)realism and (neo)liberalism. While it would be inaccurate to say that identity suddenly (re)emerged as a factor in world politics, as an analytical category it has only recently found its way into the conventional lexicon of IR theorists.

Peeling the onion: autochthony in North Kivu, DRC

Many different attempts have been made to explain the ongoing conflict in the DRC, ranging from ethnicity, to greed and resource wars, to the role of colonialism, and each provides useful contributions to the debate. In this article, we emphasise the concept of autochthony, which links identity and space, enabling the speaker to establish a direct claim to territory by asserting that he or she is an original inhabitant, a ‘son of the soil’. Its expressions have led to violent struggles in Africa, where assertions about autochthony are used to justify land claims. This can be clearly seen in the case of eastern DRC. While acknowledging significance of both regional and international factors, we regard the conflict in North Kivu as largely an agrarian war, and its root causes must be located in the complex web of uncertainties concerning citizenship and land rights. This is fuelled as well as further complicated by the extraction of the valuable minerals that are abundant in this part of the Congo. This article explores how armed non-state groups in eastern DRC, specifically in the North Kivu conflict zone, attempt to create an order for operation, survival and navigation in a population to whom it seeks support from as well as preys upon. We believe that our analysis highlights the need for an approach that assumes conflicts always have a local angle, and in the case of DR Congo and North Kivu this is land and the questions concerning belonging.