Differenciating dysfunction: Domestic agency, entanglement and mediatised petitions for Africa’s own solutions Mutinda (Sam) Nzioki 2018 Differenciating dysfunction: Domestic agency, entanglement and mediatised petitions for Africa’s own solutions By Mutinda (Sam) Nzioki Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Ph.D. Africa Studies in the Faculty of the Humanities at the University of the Free State July 2018 Supervisor: Prof. André Keet Co-supervisor: Dr. Inge Konik Declaration I, Mutinda (Sam) Nzioki [UFS student number 2015107697], hereby declare that ‘Differenciating dysfunction’: Domestic agency, entanglement and mediatised petitions for Africa’s own solutions is my own work, and has not previously been submitted for assessment to another University or for another qualification. Further, all the sources that I have used and/or quoted within this work have been clearly indicated and acknowledged by complete references. July 2018 Mutinda (Sam) Nzioki _________________________ Table of contents Acknowledgments i Abstract ii Introduction 1 Repurposing and creative re-opening 5 Overview of chapters 10 Chapter 1: Key Concepts and Questions 14 Becoming different: Africa Rising and de-Westernisation 20 Laying out the process: Problems, questions and objectives 26 Thinking apparatus of the enemy: The burden of Nyamnjoh’s co-theorisation 34 Conceptual framework and technique of analysis 38 Cryonics of African ideas? 42 Media function of inventing: Overview of rationale for re-opening space 44 Concluding reflections on mapping 51 Chapter 2: Africarise: Responding to Afropessimism 55 Contesting Africa’s pathologisations 67 Theoretical and philosophical considerations regarding African solutions: Three historical moments 71 Founding history: Master sciences and the Idea of Africa 76 The Pan-Negro moment 83 The Pan-Africanist nationalist moment 87 Nkrumah’s self-criticism 93 Media and post-independence 94 Chapter 3: Methodological Reflections 96 Points of conjunction with African traditional and postcolonial ideas 99 Points of divergence: Methodological and conceptual insufficiencies 101 Deleuze: Philosophy of difference and becomings 102 Difference in itself: Critique of philosophers of difference 104 Establishing foundation: Affirming ground 109 Differentiation, differenciation, and becoming 112 Repetition and passive synthesis: Never the same river, never the same man 115 Mbembe’s method and ‘irreverence’: Re-reading Africa’s dysfunctions 121 Insufficient approaches 123 Commandement: Arbitrariness and banality of violent dehumanisation 127 Differenciation: Processes to solutions without limits 130 Analysing assemblages: Collective enunciation and mapping difference 135 Assemblages of mediatisation 138 Scaling assemblages to Africarise: Micro to macro 141 Mapping the assemblage 142 Mapping assemblages of enunciation: Key elements to a combinatorial associative model 143 Concluding remarks on use of the methodological framework 146 Chapter 4: Is New Africa Possible? An Analysis of New African as a Principal Expression of Africarise 148 Founding ‘pathologists’: Entangling geographical rationality and new Africa 150 “Escorted by Europeans”: Who has the right to speak Africa? 152 Becoming distinctly African-ist: Radical editorial shifts and “Beefs” 155 Beyond Africa rising: The struggle to re-manufacture Africa’s reality 161 Re-awakening Africa rudely: Recurrent movement, reversals and blockages in themes 166 “Pouring sand in their gari”: Ankomah’s era of unrepentant Afrocentrism 172 “Solutions lie in our continent”: Entanglements and difficult home truths 177 Un-Africanness and the question of belonging: Homosexuality and ethnicity 183 Ethnic belonging as a deficit 190 The importance of Ankomah: Activist practitioners for Africarise 191 Thinking with and against Mbembe: Ankomah’s distinctive events 195 Ankomah’s turn to patriotism 203 Conclusion 208 Chapter 5: Agents of ‘Subterfuge’ and Transgression 210 Laying ground: Philosophical and practical considerations 212 CNNMultichoice awards: An assemblage for recognising African journalists 216 Mapping award processes 218 Entanglements: The material West, technologies, and the world 220 Anas: Subterfuge for African solutions 226 Mwangi: A creative scourge to power 232 Anas and Mwangi: Obligated indigenes confronting power inside community 242 Critique of Anas’s and Mwangi’s extreme practice 248 Conclusion 254 Chapter 6: Concluding Reflections on Getting Africa, Our Way 255 Explaining ontological commitments 258 Thinking Africa with Mbeki’s “who?” 260 Our Way: Thinking Africa for itself 262 Conceptualising our way as ground for difference itself 269 Why our way and not simply Ubuntu 270 Connecting Ijesaness (belonging) and Ubuntu 272 Africanity’s difference: Mbeki’s third “who?” 274 Contributions of this study to Africa-purposed scholarship and Africarise 277 Conclusion 289 Bibliography 291 i Acknowledgments I am very grateful to my supervisor Prof. André Keet for being a true Mwalimu – teacher – for his generosity of spirit and so allowing me to explore, and for deep critical reflections on both this work and life. I also want to thank my co-supervisor Dr. Inge Konik for the immense intellectual talents that she imparted to this process, and the consistent probing and encouragement that kept me awake to the task at hand. Special appreciation goes to my internal co-supervisor Dr Stephanie Cawood for her firm support and guidance through thus journey, and especially for committing to oversee those demanding administrate processes, which are often taken for granted. I would like to extend special gratitude to Dru, Ethan and Kareema, my family, for allowing me to be away during special moments, and Dru for carrying me at very crucial times. In addition, I would like to acknowledge Prof. Blanche Pretorius, and the Department of Research Capacity Development at the Nelson Mandela University for the financial support provided to support the completion of this Doctoral study. To my colleagues at the former Department of Journalism, Media and Philosophy, and in particular Prof. Adrian Konik, thank you for heeding the call to share the load along the way. ii Abstract Africa’s optimistic expressions of a reawakening, a rising, to its own solutions remain nervously alive, albeit haunted by the reversals that quenched all previous enthusiasms concerning a rebirth. Still, this study draws creative impetus from African wisdom voiced in the Akamba idiom, Mbéé ndì Mwéné (No one can claim ownership of what lies ahead/the future). Being so, this study proceeds as a contemporary re-entering into part of the existing terms which calibrate the question of how to get Africa right. This process obliges consultations with earlier African voices and ideas that committed to ‘own solutions’ to post-independence problems, or rather more unflatteringly, ‘dysfunctions’. As a contemporary inquiry, this effort contends that posing adequate questions that can get to the heart of present normative life or public culture – as Lewis Gordon and Achille Mbembe put it – requires thinking in African scholarship and practice proceeding in ontological commitments which enable sharper specification of Africa’s difficult situations: for instance, bursts of ethno-religious violence, perilous migrations, xenophobia/Afrophobia, and corruption. However, seeing that many an Africanist scholarship makes these very claims, key to this challenge are the terms and approaches developed for sharper specification and adequacy, as these relate to locating, affirming and/or disregarding numerous important processes immediate to Africa’s conditions. In this regard, key concepts in this study are Africarise, differenciation, mediatisation, ground, and our way, with the central approaches being co-theorisation and relatedly, transversalism which involves creative interconnection with ideas and practices. Further still, because current life has increasingly seen mediatised expressions dominate social production, sharper specification of Africa asks of this African scholarship to connect with other generative grammars and methods of encountering Africans and Africanity. Those connections draw on established concepts that have often spoken Africa, alongside African ideas whose capacity remains un-utilised, as well as mediatised expressions in the street. However, while this process of connections and openings iii will unveil ugly clashes and contradictions, it offers even greater cause for affirming possibilities in Africa’s future. Key words: difference, differenciation, Africanity, mediatisation, calibration, our way, media, journalism, Idea, ground, event, intensity 1 Africans might attribute opinions to ancestors, thereby implying that the opinions are ageless or immutable…however, “ancestors” cannot be taken in a literal sense. If we so took it, we would need to determine who the ancestors were, when they lived, and by implication when original thinking ceased and why.1 (Owomoyela, Africa and the Imperative of Philosophy: A Sceptical Consideration, 1987) Introduction This effort seeks to contribute to ongoing conversations on the future of Africa-purposed scholarship. Located within African studies, it pursues a partial re-opening2 of space in the scholarship and practice of media in Africa. Immediately, it is thrust into the broader challenge posed by historian Tiyambe Zeleza and philosophers Kwasi Wiredu and Paulin Hountondji, on rethinking knowledge production for Africa. For Zeleza, appropriate response to Africa’s