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Histories of authority in the African Great Lakes: trajectories and transactions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2020

Marie-Eve Desrosiers  and
Aidan Russell
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Abstract

This article reflects on how scholars have engaged with the past and with notions of authority in the African Great Lakes. A dominant ‘presentist’ perspective on the region mobilizes historical knowledge in an uncritical fashion, reducing authority to a set of historical clichés and building on a familiar focus on crises and the state. Bridging history and political science, we propose two concepts to analyse histories of political authority to unsettle presentist biases: trajectories and transactions. To illustrate the contribution these alternative lenses make, we present two historical vignettes. First, we revisit the 1973 coup in Rwanda as an ambiguous trajectory of authority-making and unmaking. Then, we consider languages of praise and petitioning in Burundi in the 1960s, to show how authority is lived, manifested and challenged through local transactional relations.

Résumé

Résumé

Cet article se penche sur la manière dont sont abordés le passé et les notions d'autorité dans les Grands Lacs africains. La perspective ‘présentiste’ dominant la production de savoir sur la région tend à mobiliser les connaissances historiques de manière peu critique, réduisant l'autorité à un ensemble de clichés historiques et se concentrant à outrance sur les thèmes familiers des crises et de l’État. Combinant l'histoire et la science politique, nous proposons deux concepts pour analyser l'histoire de l'autorité politique de la région de manière à désamorcer les biais présentistes : les trajectoires et les transactions. Pour illustrer la contribution que peuvent faire ces concepts alternatifs, nous présentons deux vignettes historiques. Tout d'abord, nous revisitons le coup d’État de 1973 au Rwanda à titre de trajectoire ambiguë de création et délitement de l'autorité. Ensuite, nous nous penchons sur le language de louange et de pétition au Burundi dans les années 1960, afin d'illustrer comment l'autorité se vit, se manifeste et est également remise en question à travers des relations transactionnelles locales.

Type
Great Lakes histories
Information
Africa , Volume 90 , Issue 5 , November 2020 , pp. 952 - 971
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Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2020

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