THE IDEA OF MODERNITY AND POPULAR POLITICAL SUBJECTIVITY

It is important to note that in the academic study of anti-colonial resistance movements in Africa, not only has political consciousness rarely been central, but when it has indeed been the object of study it has been regularly reduced to its social location as well as interpreted, ‘anthropologised’ and translated into an idiom comprehensible to liberal or Marxist post-Enlightenment historical science. Variously described as ‘religious’, ‘tribal’, ‘ethnic’, ‘traditional’ or ‘pre-capitalist’ in their ideologies, such forms of consciousness have been distinguished from those of ‘modernity’ precisely by relating them to their social foundations. While so-called ‘traditional’, ‘ethnic’ and ‘religious’ expressions of resistance have been seen as typical of ‘tribal’, peasant and other primarily rural-based movements, urban ones have been seen as focused on more recognisably ‘modern’ characteristics such as those of class and nation. Until the 1980s it was rarely thought that ethnic and religious subjectivities could perfectly well be ‘modern’ expressions of resistance (contemporary to capitalism) and that ethnic and religious movements, for example, could also be nationalist idioms. The dominance of historicism in social science was evidenced, for example, by Terence Ranger's distinction between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ forms of resistance to coloni-alism, the former being understood as largely peasant, ethnically circumscribed and rural-based, and the latter being urban, nationalist and modern in their thinking. Closely following the arguments of social historians such as Eric Hobsbawm, who distinguished between ‘primitive’ and ‘modern’ rebels (the former being characterised by a ‘pre-political’ consciousness), historians and social scientists of Africa, much like those of Haiti, have restricted their understanding of political subjectivities to their apparently recognisable Western modern forms.

In this view, modernity in political subjectivity could not take other forms than those recognisably articulating issues of citizenship and democracy, organised in political parties, unions and other interest groups, and using a language of rights within a specific domain of ‘the political’.