The state in Africa : the politics of the belly by Bayart Jean-François

Author:Bayart, Jean-François
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Africa, Sub-Saharan -- Politics and government -- 1960-
ISBN: 058206421X
Publisher: London ; New York : Longman
Published: 1993-09-19T16:00:00+00:00

THE HISTORIC POSTCOLONIAL BLOC

How, then, can the conclusion of this process of ‘transformism’, which remains highly hypothetical, be conceptualised? Another of Gramsci’s ideas may be helpful. Fortunately, it replaces the terms currently in use, as it allows the two instances that we have separated to be linked together, that of the relationship of the State to social stratification, and that of the articulation of modes of production.

In itself, the concept of the historic bloc’ is no clearer than the idea of ‘passive revolution’. According to Gramsci, this concept brings about the organic unity of the superstructure and the infrastructure, and also of civil society and political society; in itself, it cannot be separated from the study of hegemony. It also refers to some concrete historical phenomena - especially the development of France and Italy in the nineteenth century - in order to analyse the inegalitarian development of social classes and the capacity or incapacity of the ‘founding class’ to conserve or build up its hegemony. Due to the fact that the ‘historic bloc is indissociable from this last idea, it cannot be reduced to a simple class alliance’ (although it does not exclude this type of articulation, between the founding class and ‘auxiliary classes’), and it attributes a

determinant mission to the intellectuals, who are defined as the ‘civil servants of the superstructure’.

It could be argued that in contemporary African societies there is probably neither any constituted historic bloc, in the strict sense of the term, nor an established dominant class, except perhaps at the regional level in the form of what Gramsci called ‘local historic blocs’. Northern Nigeria would provide the best example. It must also be pointed out that this concept is not being used in an orthodox way, as I have already revealed my doubt about the period of the formation of social classes in contemporary Africa. Nevertheless, I would argue that the trajectory of the ‘quest for hegemony’ entails the edification of a postcolonial historic bloc, usually in the bastard’ mode of the ‘passive revolution’. By understanding the concept in this way, it can have a triple use, as long as the role of indeterminacy and autonomy presupposed by Gramsci in this concept is kept in mind. 56 The notion of‘historic bloc’ allows one to go beyond the semantic dichotomy between the ‘alliance’ and the ‘fusion’ ot dominant social groups engaged in the quest for hegemony. It recognises the central action of the ‘evolues’, the ‘educated people’, and the ‘intellectuals’ throughout the last century. Above all, it creates a new synthesis out of the false contradictions in which studies of African societies have been trapped for thirty years by balancing ethnic explanations, dependency theory and class analysis. The concept of the ‘historic bloc’, with its axiom that the regional asymmetry of power within a society, and the involvement of this society in the world economy, constitute one and the same reality, allows one to think simultaneously of the international, national and local dimensions of the development of the postcolonial State.

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