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Obama’s Africa Policy: The Limits of Symbolic Power

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 August 2013

Paul Tiyambe Zeleza
Paul Tiyambe Zeleza*
Affiliation:
Paul Tiyambe Zeleza is the Presidential Professor of African American Studies and History and the dean of the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He previously served as director of the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and as head of the Department of African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has published scores of essays and more than two dozen books, including, most recently, In Search of African Diasporas: Testimonies and Encounters(Carolina Academic Press, 2012). E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract:

The election of Barack Obama as the first African-descended president of the United States in 2008 was greeted with euphoria in the U.S. and around the world, including Africa. Little, however, changed in the substance of U.S.–Africa relations. This underscores the limits of the symbolic politics of race and presidential personalities in the face of the structural imperatives of U.S. power and foreign policy in which African interests remain marginal and subordinate to U.S. interests. The article explores the structural contexts of foreign policy-making in the United States and what might be expected from the second Obama administration.

Résumé:

L’élection en 2008 de Barack Obama comme premier président américain de descendance africaine a été accueillie avec euphorie aux États-Unis et dans le monde entier, y compris en Afrique. Presque rien cependant n’a changé dans les relations USA Afrique. Cette situation souligne les limites de la politique symbolique contre le racisme et du pouvoir des personnalités présidentielles face aux impératifs structurels du pouvoir américain de sa politique étrangère dans le contexte de laquelle les intérêts africains restent marginaux et secondaires aux intérêts américains. Cet article explore les contextes structurels du façonnement de la politique étrangère aux Etats-Unis et ce à quoi on pourrait s’attendre lors du second mandat du président Obama.

Keywords

2012 presidential election
Type
ASR FORUM: THE 2012 U.S. ELECTION AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S.–AFRICA POLICY
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 56 , Issue 2 , September 2013 , pp. 165 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2013 

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