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Articles
Staging Africa
The warning and the promise
Africa is like a primed powder-keg, subject to internal and external forces that inscribe and determine its future, writes Cameroonian philosopher Jean Godefroy Bidima. Cutting the fuse will require self-reflection. Only then can Africa act in its own interests and those of the wider human family.
The myth of weakness
Esprit 10/2020
Slow, indecisive, vulnerable to manipulation: the charges against democracy are familiar. But as contributions to ‘Esprit’ argue, what makes democracy fragile also makes it strong. Including Michaël Fœssel on democracy’s relation to time, and Axel Honneth on the new spirit of participation.
Reconnecting democracy and representation
Revue Projet 378 (2020)
French journal ‘Revue Projet’ warns against the old assumption that representation must be democratic and argues that the electoral system must be de-privatized. Also: revisiting Bruno Latour’s ‘parliament of things’ – can natural objects be given legal and political representation?
African futures
Esprit 7–8/2020
In ‘Esprit’, African intellectuals move beyond the post-colonial question. Including Jean Godefroy Bidima on the traumas of the African past: how self-reflection can avert a future explosion. Also: Souleymane Bachir Diagne on the restitution of African artifacts and a Bantu reimagining of the museum, and Bruno Latour on ‘geosocial class’.