Abstract
While the Nigerian public sphere has, over the past decades, witnessed several significant transformations, the historiography of its emergence in historical research has been greatly hampered by an overreliance on colonial structures. Since attaining independence in 1960, Nigeria’s dynamic socio-cultural and political milieu has stimulated a sizeable academic corpus across various disciplines each with cutting-edge research that explores different areas and dimensions of the Nigerian polity. Chief among these are works that examine the crisis of religion and politics in Nigeria, which many have argued is the most significant issue facing the country’s postcolonial history. Whether or not religion is justified in the Nigerian public sphere is less the concern of this work, but rather the historiography of its rise as a dominant force. Historical research has shown a somewhat problematic tendency to locate the later structure of Nigerian politics in colonialism, suggesting that colonialism, by drawing people of different traditions into one geographical orbit, predominantly created the religiopolitical crisis that the country faces today. This paper considers their fundamental premise as flawed and wishes to provincialize the colonial gaze within which the history of Nigeria’s politics has often been interpreted. It seeks to broaden the panorama of the study of religion and politics in Nigeria beyond a narrow focus on colonial structure to include indigenous agencies that emerged in response. Ultimately, this study adopts the Foucauldian discourse analysis to generate a more nuanced understanding, showing that the lines from colonialism to subsequent developments cannot be drawn so directly.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
COLONIALISM, RELIGION AND POLITICS, FOUCAULDIAN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS, HISTORY OF RELIGION
