CFP: The African Commonwealth - Strasbourg 26 April 2019

Mélanie Torrent Discussion

The African Commonwealth : perceptions, realities and limits

 

5th workshop on the Commonwealth of Nations, organised by the Laboratoire de recherches sur les cultures anglophones (UMR 8225, Paris Diderot) and Sociétés, Acteurs, Gouvernement en Europe (UMR 7363, Sciences Po Strasbourg)

 

26 April 2019

Institute of Political Studies, Strasbourg

 

The next Commonwealth Summit, due to be held in Kigali in 2020, promises to give Africa new visibility in the politics of the governmental delegations and civil society organisations which will converge in Rwanda. The youngest member of the Commonwealth, having joined in 2009, a joint member of the Francophonie whose secretary general is now former Rwandan Foreign and International Cooperation Secretary Louise Mushikiwabo, and an active player in global, continental and regional dynamics, Rwanda will be an important space for the Commonwealth to show that it is an attractive multilateral organisation for the 21st century – and for observers to assess this critically. On Africa, beside a number of success stories, the ongoing “Anglophone crisis” in Cameroon will raise difficult but urgent questions. More generally, the renegotiation of the Cotonou Agreements and the question of the Economic Partnership Agreements, the redefinition of the UK’s relations with the overall Commonwealth (including in the current uncertain context of Brexit) and the interest shown by African states in either re-entering (Zimbabwe) or joining (Togo) the Commonwealth also makes a re-assessment of the meaning of the Commonwealth in Africa and for Africa an important and timely issue.

 

This workshop will therefore investigate the notion of an “African Commonwealth” through several interrelated questions. First, do Commonwealth members in Africa form, beyond specificities and differences, a common, united group that acts as one? If so, under what particular circumstances or in what policy areas has such a common voice arisen? Secondly, what influence have African politics, African states, and African diplomats in particular, played in the institutional evolution of the Commonwealth of Nations, including styles of diplomacy and the transformation of the “people’s Commonwealth”? Thirdly, what influence have Commonwealth actors (state and non-state, African and non-African) had in African politics? The promotion of democracy, human rights and the rule of law, of development and of peace and security, cuts across domestic and external policy. Programmes carried out in Africa also have implications elsewhere in the Commonwealth, which require further study. Finally, what light do relations with the other Commonwealths in Africa, the Francophonie and the Community of Portuguese-Speaking States, shed on an “African Commonwealth”?

 

Simultaneously, definitions of Africa go beyond the boundaries of the African continent, encompassing the African diaspora (past and current) throughout the world as well as other diasporas in Africa itself, and the legacy of pan-Africanism in the variety of its intellectual, philosophical and political roots and in its cultural networks. How these networks operate within the Commonwealth, in partial relation with it (and perhaps in some instances, in an openly affirmed independence from it), will constitute a key area of investigation for this workshop. In recent times, debates on black studies and African studies and the decolonisation of academia, on reparation and commemoration, or again on migration and citizenship rights after empire, have also raised important issues for the Commonwealth to grapple with – in the writing of its history and in its current politics.

The purpose of the workshop is therefore to define what Africa is for the Commonwealth and vice versa, but also to challenge the category, and investigate how networks of cooperation, both in and outside the Commonwealth, cut across various linguistic, cultural and historical boundaries.

 

Papers in English or French are invited on any of the questions above, on both historical issues and contemporary politics.

 

Papers presented at the workshop will be considered for an edited volume.

 

Please send an abstract (max. 500 words) and a short CV to Mélanie Torrent (melanie.torrent@univ-paris-diderot.fr) and Virginie Roiron (virginie.roiron@unistra.fr) no later than 15 February. For any further information on the workshop, please contact both the organisers.

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