Federalism, Sovereignty, Territory and the Problem of Creating the Collective

• In Event: Zones of Sovereignty? Territoriality and Spatial Governance

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the ways in which Pan-Africanist and Francophone-African federalism of the mid-twentieth century both entailed and went beyond territorial claims in order to construct and defend not only sovereignty but also an invented Pan-African identity and Franco-African identity respectively. Territorial claims were made in so far as land in Africa and the Caribbean was, via a largely centralised state spanning a continent (in the Pan-African case) or a region (Franco-African case), to be reclaimed as the sovereign property of African or Franco-African citizens. Such territorial claims were, however, less central in so far as they were the base but not a prerequisite for the construction of a pan-African identity (in both the Anglophone and Francophone case) that also spanned places in which territory was not being claimed, such as the United States of America, even though such identity construction was made more meaningful by reference to African territory. Via my analysis, I hope to make a case for territoriality that both contains and exceeds notions of sovereignty, to highlight the ways in which it can also provide the base for liberatory identities that in the long run may not require attachment to territory. I take as case studies federal projects in both Francophone and Anglophone Africa—particularly the ways in which the related Negritude and Pan-Africanist movements engaged with territory but were crucially undermined by their failure to establish a meaningful super-territorial collective identity that also went beyond sovereign claims that would necessarily underwrite their concomitant projects.

Author

• Stephanie Wanga, London School of Economics