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Revisinting the "Black Man's Burden": Eritrea and the Curse of the Nation-state

This thesis argues that the state apparatus has failed to provide Africans with a culturally compatible form of governance. The state is a product of colonial origin, and thus, has failed to resonate with Indigenous African spirituality, moral consciousness or political tradition. By grounding my argument in the Eritrean context, I make the case that the Eritrean state – not unlike other African states – is failing in three fundamental ways. First, it is oppressive towards Indigenous institutions of governance, particularly the village baito practiced in the rural highlands of Eritrea. Second, the state promotes a national identity that has been arbitrarily formed and colonially imposed in place of Indigenous ones, such as those formed around regional or linguistic groupings. Lastly, because the Eritrean state is a rather new phenomenon that suffers from a crisis of legitimacy, it inevitably falls back on processes of violence, coercion and control to assert its authority.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/25675
Date01 January 2011
CreatorsSium, Aman
ContributorsWane, Njoki
Source SetsUniversity of Toronto
Languageen_ca
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis

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