El conocimiento sobre la cognición: metaconocimiento

I do not think that the national liberation struggle is directed towards inverting systems of oppression in such as way that the master of today will be the slave of tomorrow. To think in this way is to go against the current of history. Attitudes of social revenge can never be what we want, which is the freedom of men.

Agostinho Neto (Neto 1974, p. 19)

It could be objected that the language of autonomy and self-determination has limited cross-culture validity because of its Western origins.

David held (held 2003, p. 472)

Introduction¹

Contemporary International Relations (IR) scholarship contains contradictory strands and tendencies that reflect the discipline’s historical and geopolitical origins and development. Mainstream IR scholarship remains essentially conserv-ative, connected with the maintenance of state power. Critical IR seeks explicitly to expose the historical structures of international power and develop knowledge that might contribute to the progressive and emancipatory transformation of world order (Wyn Jones 2001). However, much critical IR scholarship remains limited by a deeply rooted eurocentrism that structures the whole of the western academy, and especially the discipline of IR (Gruffydd Jones 2006b). Efforts in critical IR to articulate normative challenges to the global status quo remain limited as a result of overlooking both the imperial nature of international order and the global history of anti-imperial and non-Western struggles and discourses. The critical project in IR remains hampered by its partial selection of resources of critique, and reproduces long-entrenched certitudes regarding the benign and progressive character of Western modernity. Within international political economy, scholars concerned with problems of oppression, the maintenance of hegemonic world

orders and possibilities of global transformation, have turned fruitfully to the insights of Marx and Gramsci, but persistently overlook other sources of critique such as Frantz Fanon and Amílcar Cabral. Within normative debate, those con-cerned with the possibilities of a more just social and international order turn, by habit and instinct, to the Western canon of political thought. Cosmopolitan theory within IR is used in this chapter as an exemplar of well-intentioned debate that falls woefully short of disciplinary claims to provide understanding of interna-tional source and relevance.

A richer understanding of the deep challenges that confront any attempt at progressive global transformation is possible if, instead of starting from Western philosophy, we learn from a broader, global range of experiences, including radi-cal internationalist, feminist and anti-colonial struggles. This chapter explores the liberation struggles that developed against Portuguese colonial rule in Africa in the mid-twentieth century. A commitment to anti-racism and internationalism was an integral component of the thought and practice of the leading figures in these liberation struggles – Agostinho Neto, Amílcar Cabral, Eduardo Mondlane and Samora Machel. The chapter explores how these two defining features arose from the analysis and experience of colonial oppression, as well as from critical engagement with existing traditions of revolutionary thought and practice from other contexts.

For some critics, across various positions, such an exercise of retrieval would seem at best idealist, at worst irrelevant. Today, under conditions of global neo-liberal hegemony, the war on terror and the rise of China, what is the point of dwelling on the anti-colonial radicalism of the 1970s? Surely, to do so could only be to indulge in romantic nostalgia. Many critics, including some post-colonial critics, see little merit in ‘Afro-radicalism’ with its modernist visions and mono-lithic utopian politics.² It would seem that while the thought of Cabral et al. might have been momentarily effective four decades ago, it has long passed its use-by date. Of course, the current global conjuncture is very different to that of the 1960s or 1970s. Yet, while in Africa colonialism as such is no longer the prob-lem, the deepening and strengthening of relations of global domination under the supremely technocratic guise of finance and multilateral development aid has not altogether invalidated the basic analysis of neocolonialism articulated by such thinkers. The purpose of this chapter, however, is not to explore the contemporary relevance of these struggles and their discourses. While no doubt important, such an exercise requires first that these struggles are examined in their own right. They should be recognized as important moments in the global repertoire of struggles occasioned by the contradictions of modernity in the twentieth century. In the context of the discipline of IR, with which this book engages, such recognition is both necessary and inherently radical, given the weight of the academy’s euro-centric amnesia and wilful silence regarding the existence, originality and worth of political discourse of African origin. (Rarely does one read that Machiavelli or Hobbes is no longer worthy of study.) Analysis of these struggles also contributes to the ongoing and much broader critical analysis of the global history of black radicalism (Edwards 2001; Bogues 2003).

The analysis set out here is not an idealist, textual celebration articulated in abstraction from historical context or consequence, but an attempt to examine the relationship between historically specific experiences and relations, and emergent forms of practice and thought. While foregrounding the colonial context within which luso-African anti-colonial discourse emerged, it is fundamentally impor-tant that such an inquiry does not presume from the outset the content of this discourse. In his reflections on the intellectual terrain of the ‘non-West’, Shilliam highlights the question of subjecthood as a central but complex issue at the heart of struggles against identities and positions imposed through colonial domination.

He also cautions against the perils of seeking to represent the non-West, especially if efforts are led by abstract theory rather than concrete historical investigation attuned to the creative agency of the colonised. Finally, Shilliam persistently returns to remind us of the enormously variegated breadth and form of the colo-nial and anti-colocolo-nial experience. Heeding such cautions, we must be attentive to the actual historical specificity of the visions of alternative subjecthood that arose in the context of different anti-colonial struggles.

This chapter highlights in particular the anti-racism and internationalism embedded within the luso-African anti-colonial struggles. The structure of Portuguese colonial oppression in Africa was profoundly racialized. In such a heavily structured context, what forms of resistance and what alternative concep-tions of subjecthood are possible? Pius Adesanmi has argued that,

because whiteness has always predicated its own historical agency on a Hegelian, master-slave negation of its racialized others, the subalternized entity could only launch itself on the tortuous path to agency in two ways.

First was to name and assign the appropriate responsibilities to the sign of its negation, hence the emergence and the consolidation of the white-European oppressor category in African historicist discourses. Second was to come to terms with the equation of its own color with all things negative and its consequent containment within demonized geospatial territories; hence, the emergence of an oppositional black-victim category within the same context.

This prise de conscience is the foundation of the philosophy of struggle inher-ent in African discourses and constitutes the informing spirit of the praxes represented by African nationalist and liberationist struggles.

(Adesanmi 2004, pp. 42–3) Yet at different historical moments and contexts, emancipatory struggles have emerged which deliberately attempted to go beyond the logic of racialization, and to imagine the anti-colonial and post-colonial subject without a defining reference to race (Grovogui 2006a). It is important to remember these cases in themselves, as historically existing forms of struggle that sought to transcend logics of racialized revenge or restoration, evidence which contradicts the conflation of emancipation with race as a matter of necessity. As this chapter underlines, the liberation struggles of the Portuguese African colonies explicitly refused catego-ries of both ‘white European oppressor’ and ‘black victim’. The very possibility

of constructing anti-racist social orders in a racialized global order is shot with contradiction. however, the difficulties of subsequently realizing an anti-racist post-colonial society is a related but distinct question, beyond the scope and pur-pose of the present chapter.

Cosmopolitanism in IR theory

One of the many important strands of critical IR is the development of a cosmo-politan project. This seeks to theorize and identify possibilities for the realization of a cosmopolitan world order, or world society, in which all people (as individu-als) are treated equally and the equal rights and moral status of all are recognized and realized.³ The debates explore the question of the possible and best forms of relationship between bounded political communities which prioritize members over outsiders, and the universal ethical and equitable treatment and interaction of all individuals in the world, as moral agents of equal worth. Cosmopolitan theory promotes values of universal moral equality, universal dialogue, and democracy and justice. It is argued that for the realization of such principles, the social order must be organized to facilitate the participation of all voices in discussion and dialogue on an equitable, unconstrained basis where participation is not hindered by material inequalities. Cosmopolitan theory advocates that the social and international order should be designed on the principle of not doing, or minimizing, harm (intentional and unintentional) to others, including distant strangers (Linklater 2001, 2002).

The objectives of this project are laudable and, on their own terms, progressive.

However, the limitations of this project become apparent when it is considered in and against a broader global context, both theoretical and historical – most impor-tantly, the global context of colonial modernity. In raising profound questions of the appropriate treatment of members of a political community and ‘others’

or ‘distant strangers’, IR theorists draw on Western classical and contemporary political thought, from Pufendorf, Vattel and Kant to habermas, Rawls and Beitz.

In turning thus to what Shilliam calls its own internal resources, IR treats the Western canon not as a body or tradition of thought, but the tradition of thought.

Andrew Linklater, outlining ‘the classical approach to political community’, writes ‘The classical approach has dominated political theory and practice for more than three centuries. . . . My assumption is that the majority of the world’s population accepts some version of the classical approach’ (Linklater 2002, pp.

138–9).

IR theory about cosmopolitanism, its normative discourse and implications for institutional design and political practice are developed with reference to a specific understanding of world history, as well as a specific set of references of political thought and experience. What is assumed, usually implicitly and sometimes explicitly, is the Western provenance and the progressive character of cosmopolitanism. There is an assumed fit and unique integral consistency between notions of ‘modernity’, ‘democracy’, ‘equality’, ‘justice’, ‘progress’, ‘rights’

and their historical referents located in the Western experience (for example,

Linklater 2002, p. 144; held 2003, pp. 471–2). The literature identifies a progres-sive entrenchment of cosmopolitan values within the institutions of international order, in particular from the mid-twentieth century. Albeit with various qualifica-tions, IR cosmopolitans imply a narrative of world historical progress towards a cosmopolitan ideal, embedded in the development and expansion of ‘international society’ (Linklater 2002, p. 146). The emergence of cosmopolitan values in the institutions and practice of international relations is characteristically identified in the post-Second World War institutional complex of the United Nations (Held 2002; held 2003, pp. 473–5).

Cosmopolitan literature in IR essentially grapples with how bounded political communities, existing in an international states system and international society can and should best balance and integrate rights and duties, obligations and pref-erences, towards members of one’s own community and ‘others’, ‘foreigners’ or

‘distant strangers’, especially distant strangers who are suffering. Yet it rarely gives explicit consideration to the history and continuation of imperial structures and practices, or to non-Western experiences, political institutions or bodies of thought, many of which have arisen in and against imperial oppression. It is not simply that IR theory has inadvertently overlooked a rich source of historical and theoretical insight into the normative questions being posed. The very questions posed by cosmopolitan theory in IR make little substantive sense when considered in abstraction from the imperial context of global modernity. Or, perhaps, they make sense only when the global context of modernity is overlooked. For at the heart of imperial order is precisely the deliberate establishment and legitimation of political boundaries, essentialized cultures and traditions, norms of inclusion and exclusion, and the differential treatment of ‘selves’ and ‘others’.

When imperialism and the rest of the world are brought into view, the his-torical narrative of international moral progress emergent from the West becomes unsustainable. The orthodox narrative of the progressive entrenchment of cos-mopolitan norms with the expansion of international society from Europe to the rest of the world overlooks, for example, the profound struggles over the estab-lishment of the UN system and the imperial world context that heavily shaped those struggles. In particular, it overlooks the centrality of struggles over race and colonialism that were waged within and without the UN system from its very beginnings. Organizations and individuals representing African-Americans and colonized peoples campaigned to extend, strengthen and broaden the formulation and institutionalization of ‘rights’ discourse in this context. Their efforts were consistently marginalized and undermined by the leading Western powers and diplomats (Ledwidge 2007). The subsequent formal institutionalization of fur-ther progressive international norms, such as UN Resolution 1514 of December 1960 (the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples) and Resolution 1904 of November 1963, (the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination) came about on the insistence of the formerly colonized and non-Western members of the international com-munity. Major Western powers – the United States, Britain, france, Belgium and Australia – abstained from Resolution 1514 (Ince 1974, Chapter 1; Sud 1983,

Chapter 3). The orthodox narrative also overlooks the continued racial oppres-sion, colonial subjugation and counter-revolutionary terror that endured in the practice of the ‘great’ Western powers long after the formal institutionalization of the UN principles of universal rights.

In the rest of this chapter I examine the forms of political thought and prac-tice arising from one of the often forgotten moments of twentieth-century global modernity – the Portuguese colonial wars and anti-colonial struggles. Against IR cosmopolitanism’s appropriation of universal values for the West and partial read-ing of political thought, I highlight the values of internationalism, solidarity and anti-racism that emerged within and were integral to these anti-colonial struggles.

anti-racism and internationalism in the thought and practice of Neto, Cabral, Mondlane and Machel

This section examines the thought and practice of four African revolutionaries in historical, global context. There is a substantial literature addressing separately the thought and achievements of Neto, Cabral, Mondlane and Machel.⁴ Here, however, their contributions are analysed together and in relation to each other.

This serves to illuminate better the important relationships between the struggles and their leaders, and the broader context of global modernity in the twentieth century.

The political thought and practice of these key revolutionary figures was the product of a distinct set of experiences, conditions and imperatives which were rooted in the structures of global imperial modernity. The early political consciousness of Mondlane, Machel, Neto, Cabral and other leading figures in the independence movements was formed originally through direct experience and witnessing of racial oppression and discrimination, hardship and disposses-sion that characterized the Portuguese colonial social order. Each had their own individual experiences, as well as witnessing and hearing about the sufferings of family members, neighbours, fellow workers, students and colleagues, and learn-ing about the experiences of their ancestors. The conditions they experienced and witnessed, which informed their understanding of colonialism, included the rou-tine, daily humiliations and suffering foundational to the lived colonial order, as well as the specific practices of colonial war and counter-revolution, from surveil-lance, imprisonment and torture to massacres, bombardment and assassinations.

The various experiences of the humiliations and brutalities of colonial oppres-sion suffered and witnessed by Mondlane, Machel, Neto and Cabral, in Africa and Portugal, constituted a vital foundation as their understanding and consciousness developed in the course of the liberation struggles. Yet the analysis here high-lights how these experiences and the struggles to transform the basis of colonial oppression and achieve liberation led to an understanding and a set of normative commitments that sought not to match, but to transcend, the logics and exclusions of imperial order. The racism, humiliation, collusions, intimidation, practices of torture and assassination were met with deliberate efforts to forge an explicitly

anti-racist set of norms and practices, extending solidarity and respect to all, and seeking to instil discipline and humane practice in the conduct of liberation war.

The emergence of connected struggles and shared consciousness

The struggles for African independence always included an important interna-tional and shared dimension. This was embodied explicitly in the Pan-African movement, which, from the 1930s/1940s, focused increasingly on African decolonization and was increasingly influenced by Africans as well as African-Americans. In many African colonies the post-war period of the 1950s and 1960s was characterised by an opening of political space and the formation of African associations, movements and parties which organized and campaigned for independence. The fascist colonial rule of Salazar resisted any such opening, however. Political parties and organizations were banned; the African cultural, sport and educational clubs, networks and associations which emerged, mainly in urban areas, were subject to increasing surveillance and interference; and any manifestation of open resistance was met with immediate, brutal repression. All appeals for peaceful political negotiations leading to independence were refused.

Political organizing and mobilization were thus necessarily clandestine, and much of the initial activity which led to the establishment of the liberation movements took place abroad, in neighbouring countries and in Europe. This gave an impor-tant international dimension to the experiences and consciousness of the leading figures of the various national struggles.

Neto, Cabral, Mondlane and many others met initially in Portugal, while stud-ying. In the 1940s and 1950s African students studying in Lisbon and Coimbra became involved in the political resistance against fascism, participating in meetings and activities of student organizations, the Peace Movement, the MUD Juvenil (Democratic Unity Movement – Youth) and the Portuguese Communist Party.⁵ In addition, they began to organize their own activities and groups along-side, but distinct from, the Portuguese democratic movement (de Andrade 1980, pp. xxiii–xxiv). An important component were various cultural, literary and sport-ing initiatives organized among African students in Portugal. Given the weight of Portuguese racial ideology, centring on the negation of black African worth, such activities were in themselves inherently political, vehicles for individually and

Neto, Cabral, Mondlane and many others met initially in Portugal, while stud-ying. In the 1940s and 1950s African students studying in Lisbon and Coimbra became involved in the political resistance against fascism, participating in meetings and activities of student organizations, the Peace Movement, the MUD Juvenil (Democratic Unity Movement – Youth) and the Portuguese Communist Party.⁵ In addition, they began to organize their own activities and groups along-side, but distinct from, the Portuguese democratic movement (de Andrade 1980, pp. xxiii–xxiv). An important component were various cultural, literary and sport-ing initiatives organized among African students in Portugal. Given the weight of Portuguese racial ideology, centring on the negation of black African worth, such activities were in themselves inherently political, vehicles for individually and