Remembering democracy: anticolonial evocations and invocations of a disappearing norm

Abstract

This essay is a corrective to disciplinary narratives of the story of democracy. To counter this story, it proposes the vision and imaginaries of democracy enunciated in a particular strand of anticolonial and postcolonial thought in Africa. The essay aims to highlight the precepts, predicates, and norms underlying this anticolonial democratic project which was constructed against a postwar liberal democratic project perceived then to be predicated on an imperial reason.