This essay examines the prefigurative politics that birthed and has sustained the Ambazonian revolutionary movement and its war of independence in Cameroon. It uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to question the extent to which foundational value based Ambazonian discourses have lived up to the objectives of the movement’s founding. An analysis of speeches, official documents, and video content from Ambazonian leaders reveals that (1) the Ambazonian objective to secede from the state of Cameroon was initially discursively premised on prefigurative ideals, (2) the surge of radical discourses and the imprisonment of pioneer leaders of the movement prompted a deviation from the movement’s foundational goals, and (3) there is a need to reimagine the revolutionary alternative in the promised liberation of English-speaking Cameroonians.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
Agwanda, B., Nyadera, I. N., & Asal, U. Y. (2020). Cameroon and the anglophone crisis. The Palgrave encyclopedia of peace and conflict studies, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11795-5_115-1.
Alderman, D. & Inwood, J. (2013). Street naming and the politics of belonging: spatial injustices in the toponymic commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Social and Cultural Geography, 14(2), 211–233. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2012.754488.
Asante, G. (2020). Decolonizing the Erotic: Building Alliances of (Queer) African Eros. Women’s Studies in Communication, 43(2), 113–118. https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2020.1745588.
Awasom, N. F. (2020). The Anglophone problem in Cameroon yesterday and today in search of a definition. Journal of the African Literature Association, 14(2), 264–291. https://doi.org/10.1080/21674736.2020.1717124.
Banjeglav, T. (2018). Political rhetoric and discursive framing of national identity in Croatia’s commemorative culture. Journal of Language and Politics, 17(6), 858–881. https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.17074.ban.
Blommaert, J. & Bulcaen, C. (2020). Critical Discourse Analysis. Annual Review of Anthropology, 29(1), 447–466. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.29.1.447.
Boggs, C. (1977a). Marxism, prefigurative communism and the problem of workers’ control. Radical America, 6, 99–122. https://libcom.org/library/marxism-prefigurative-communism-problem-workers-control-carl-boggs.
Breines, W. (1989). Community and organization in the New Left, 1962–1968: The great refusal. Rutgers University Press.
Cheney, G. (2014). Alternative organization and alternative organizing. Retrieved May 12, 2021, from http://www.criticalmanagement.org/node/3182.
Collin, R. (2016). Introducing Jameson to critical discourse analysis. Critical Discourse Studies, 13(2), 158–173. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2015.1042393.
Cruz, J. (2015). Reimagining feminist organizing in global times: Lessons from African feminist communication. Women and Language, 38(1), 23–41. https://osclg.org/women-language/.
Cruz, J. (2017). Invisibility and Visibility in Alternative Organizing: A Communicative and Cultural Model. Management Communication Quarterly, 31(4), 614–639. https://doi.org/10.1177/0893318917725202.
DeLancey, M. D., DeLancey, M. W., & Mbuh, R. N. (2019). Historical dictionary of the Republic of Cameroon. Rowman & Littlefield.
Doh, E. F. (1993). Anglophone Cameroon Literature: Is There Any Such Thing? In N. Lyonga, Breitinger, E. & Bole Butake (Eds.), Anglophone Cameroon Writing (pp. 76–83). Bayreuth African Studies 30.
Eko, L. (2003). The English-language press and the “Anglophone problem” in Cameroon: Group identity, culture, and the politics of Nostalgia. Journal of Third World Studies, 20(1), 79–102. https://www.jstor.org/stable/45194112.
Eyoh, N. (1993). Historicity and New Anglophone Cameroon Drama. In N. Lyonga, Breitinger, E. & Bole Butake (Eds.), Anglophone Cameroon Writing (pp. 101–108). Bayreuth African Studies 30.
Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. Longman.
Fairclough, N. (2013). Critical discourse analysis. In The Routledge handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 9–20). Routledge.
Fanso, V. (1999). Anglophone and francophone nationalisms in Cameroon. The Round Table 88(350), 281–296. https://doi.org/10.1080/003585399108153.
Farooq, W., & Umar, H. (2021). The deletion of the human agent in environmental science discourse: An ecolinguistic study. University of Chitral Journal of Linguistics & Literature, 5(II), 89–111. https://doi.org/10.33195/jll.v5iII.300.
Ganesh, S. & Stohl, C. (2013). From Wall Street to Wellington: Protests in an era of digital ubiquity. Communication Monographs, 80(4), 425–451. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637751.2013.828156.
Ganesh, S. & Stohl, C. (2014). Community organizing, social movements, and collective action. In L. Putnam & Dennis Mumby (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational communication, (pp. 743–765): Sage.
García-Gómez, M., Dueñas, J. M., & Irigoyen, A. (2022). Exploring the Communication of Social Movements in Primary Education. Social Sciences, 11(3), 108. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11030108.
Hanchey, J. (2020). Desire and the Politics of Africanfuturism. Women’s Studies in Communication, 43(2), 119–124. https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2020.1745589.
Hart, C. (2008). Critical discourse analysis and metaphor: toward a theoretical framework. Critical Discourse Studies, 5(2), 91–106. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405900801990058.
Huckin, T. (2002). Critical discourse analysis and the discourse of condescension. Discourse studies in composition, 155, 176. DOI: 10.1016/S0889-4906(03)00002-4.
Jalbert, P. (1994). Structures of the ‘unsaid.’ Theory, Culture & Society, 11, 127–160. https://doi.org/10.1177/026327694011004005.
Jick, K. & Ngeh, A. (2002). The Moral Concept of Violence in African Literature: Bole Butake’s Vision in Lake God and And Palm Wine Will Flow. Humanities Review Journal, 2(2), 32–43. DOI: 10.4314/hrj.v2i2.5929.
Kah, H. (2012). The Anglophone Problem in Cameroon: The Northwest/Southwest Dichotomy from 1961–1996. Cameroon Journal on Democracy and Human Rights, 6, 71–103. https://portal.issn.org/resource/ISSN/1938-3584.
Konings, P., & Nyamnjoh, F. B. (1997). The Anglophone Problem in Cameroon. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 35(2), 207–229. http://www.jstor.org/stable/161679.
Konings, P., & Nyamnjoh, F. B. (2019). Anglophone secessionist movements in Cameroon. In L. de Vries, Pierre, E. & Mareike Schomerus (Eds.), Secessionism in African politics: Aspiration, grievance, performance, disenchantment (59–89). Palgrave Macmillan.
Maeckelbergh, M. (2011). Doing is believing: Prefiguration as strategic practice in the alterglobalization movement. Social Movement Studies, 10, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2011.545223.
Nkwi, N. (Ed.). (2015). The anthropology of Africa: Challenges for the 21st century. African Books Collective.
Obregón, R., & Tufte, T. (2017). Communication, social movements, and collective action: Toward a new research agenda in communication for development and social change. Journal of Communication, 67(5), 635–645. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12332.
Parker, M. (2002). Against Management. Cambridge: Polity.
Parker, M., Cheney, G., Fournier, V., & Land, C. (2014). The question of organization: A manifesto for alternatives” Ephemera Theory and Politics in Organization, 14(4), 623–638. https://ephemerajournal.org/contribution/question-organization-manifesto-alternatives.
Thomas, P. N. (2018). Communication for social change: Context, social movements and the digital. SAGE Publications India.
van den Berg, L., Goris, M., Behagel, J., et al. (2019). Agroecological peasant territories: resistance and existence in the struggle for emancipation in Brazil. The Journal of Peasant Studies, DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2019.1683001.
Yates, L. (2015). Rethinking Prefiguration: Alternatives, Micropolitics and Goals in Social Movements. Social Movement Studies, 14, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2013.870883.
Yates, L. (2021). Prefigurative politics and social movement strategy: The roles of prefiguration in the reproduction, mobilisation and coordination of movements. Political Studies, 69(4), 1033–1052. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720936046.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 542 | 279 | 17 |
Full Text Views | 69 | 2 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 109 | 8 | 0 |
This essay examines the prefigurative politics that birthed and has sustained the Ambazonian revolutionary movement and its war of independence in Cameroon. It uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to question the extent to which foundational value based Ambazonian discourses have lived up to the objectives of the movement’s founding. An analysis of speeches, official documents, and video content from Ambazonian leaders reveals that (1) the Ambazonian objective to secede from the state of Cameroon was initially discursively premised on prefigurative ideals, (2) the surge of radical discourses and the imprisonment of pioneer leaders of the movement prompted a deviation from the movement’s foundational goals, and (3) there is a need to reimagine the revolutionary alternative in the promised liberation of English-speaking Cameroonians.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 542 | 279 | 17 |
Full Text Views | 69 | 2 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 109 | 8 | 0 |