African agency and the problem of sovereignty
Start Date
14-4-2023 4:45 PM
End Date
14-4-2023 6:00 PM
Description
Lost in debates over Africa's agency in contemporary geopolitics is the question of whether the present represents a stark divergence from the past that it might empower or imperil African agency. Centering the question of agency in geopolitical terms blinds us to its normative basis in the principle of sovereignty and the juridical right to speak and act. If this geopolitical moment is unique it is only because this principle itself has come under sustained critique in the face of global poverty and climate change. This critique compels us to move beyond the negative sovereign obligation of non-intervention and to instead ask what, as a community of states, we owe each other. Thomas Pogge has powerfully shown how this negative duty of sovereignty produces a principled indifference to domestic affairs which belies our role in the maintenance and production of domestic poverty and human rights abuses. If we are to speak of African agency today then we must look beyond its material manifestation as an adroit weapon of the weak in geopolitical rivalry. We must instead recognise its normative and political nature too. Following Shapcott, I wish to argue not that we let historical guilt tempt us to a positive obligation to act to in the name of justice with its connotations of intervention and lost sovereignty; instead I argue that the present moment compels us to expand our negative duties to do no harm. In doing so I argue we will necessarily expand African agency.
Document Type
Presentation
Recommended Citation
Becker, D. (2023, April). African agency and the problem of sovereignty. Presented at the International Symposium on Africa-China Relations in an Era of Uncertain Future. Lingnan University, Hong Kong.
African agency and the problem of sovereignty
Lost in debates over Africa's agency in contemporary geopolitics is the question of whether the present represents a stark divergence from the past that it might empower or imperil African agency. Centering the question of agency in geopolitical terms blinds us to its normative basis in the principle of sovereignty and the juridical right to speak and act. If this geopolitical moment is unique it is only because this principle itself has come under sustained critique in the face of global poverty and climate change. This critique compels us to move beyond the negative sovereign obligation of non-intervention and to instead ask what, as a community of states, we owe each other. Thomas Pogge has powerfully shown how this negative duty of sovereignty produces a principled indifference to domestic affairs which belies our role in the maintenance and production of domestic poverty and human rights abuses. If we are to speak of African agency today then we must look beyond its material manifestation as an adroit weapon of the weak in geopolitical rivalry. We must instead recognise its normative and political nature too. Following Shapcott, I wish to argue not that we let historical guilt tempt us to a positive obligation to act to in the name of justice with its connotations of intervention and lost sovereignty; instead I argue that the present moment compels us to expand our negative duties to do no harm. In doing so I argue we will necessarily expand African agency.