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Tale of Two Sudanese Courts: Colonial Governmentality Revisited*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim
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Extract

Investigating the sour grapes of the post-colonial order has led some scholars to revisit colonialism in ways antithetical to the nationalist “consecrated rhetoric” (Heesterman 1978, 31). In the perspective of this revision, colonialism is seen as its own grave digger. Constrained by conflicting local contexts, colonial administrations, it is argued, had to make ad hoc adjustments (Phillips 1989, 11-12). Decolonization is viewed by these revisionists as a “recognition of the failure of colonialism rather than a response to the powers of nationalism” (1989, 13). It is true, perhaps, that decolonization has been studied with an overemphasis on resistance. Resistance, of course, cannot be discounted in accounting for the shoddy performance of the colonial state. However, much of the self-serving discourse of the nationalists can be easily scrapped without hurting the cause of resistance. For a better understanding of resistance itself, scholars argue, it is useful to start discussing it in “a sceptical frame of mind” (Gledhill 1994, 82).

Basic to this revision of the reasons that led to the end of the empire is an investigation of the inherent disabilities of the colonial state (Robinson 1972; Phillips 1989; Darwin 1991). It has been graphically called a “facsimile of a state” (Phillips 1989, 11) for being taken out and set apart from society (Heesterman 1987, 54). This dramatic severing of the colonizer and the colonized is reminiscent of Fanon's characterization of the colonial condition, for being unswervingly divided into European and native quarters, as “manichaean.”

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , April 1997 , pp. 13 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1997

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Footnotes

*

This article was written during a fellowship-in-residence at the Institute for Advanced Study and Research in the African Humanities at Northwestern University (1991-1992). Financial support was generously provided by the Middle East Research Committee (MERC) of the Ford Foundation, Cairo, and the Program of African Studies at Northwestern. I am grateful to Professor David W. Cohen, the Director of the Program and the Institute, and his vigorous staff for making my stay among them both productive and enjoyable. I extend my sincere thanks to Professor Ivan Karp and my other fellows at the Institute for many perceptive questions, comments and suggestions. I am very grateful for Professor Abu Salim and Dr. M.S. Karar, the former and present directors of the National Record Office, respectively, and their keen and wonderful staff for services provided on a platter blending professionalism and civility. I owe Professor Ken Perkins, Dr. John Godfrey, Akbar Virmani and Mark Auslander a mountain of 'irfan (acknowledgment) for their timely and proper editorial assistance.

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