Description
The modern state exhibits a distinct conceptual economy. Territorialization, centralization of authority, bureaucratization, citizenship and franchise signify modalities of politics that delimit subjectivities and horizons for action. Studying the globalization of the state-from and transition into formal independence through a Eurocentrist epistemology, one would assume a homogenization of political cultures as well as perceptions of legitimate authority on a world scale. Such a stance occludes the global context of institutional and intellectual entanglements that mediated the experiences of political transition in colonized societies. The state was always a contested entity and rarely the only conceivable arrangement in the independence era, yet it became a plausible solution to a specific problem-space.
A sensibility for African anticolonial thought would thus allow insights into how social and political change was conceptualized in a locally specific vernacular of the state-form. This paper therefore studies the experiences of Tanganyika/ Tanzania in the decades around its independence. By investigating the potentialities and limits of Nyerere’s attempts of translating ideas of African socialism into politics within the discursive and institutional context of a post-colonial nation-state, I sketch out the epistemic and international hierarchies that shaped the renegotiation of politics around independence. Special emphasis will be put on categories and concepts introduced by the colonial administrative setup as well as corresponding protracted histories of social formations and sociabilities which influenced the reconstitution of sociopolitical activity and political subjectivity in the postcolonial state.
