Party/Politics: Horizons in Black Political Thought (review)

Michael Hanchard's Party/Politics examines the idea of political community, though not in ways that may be immediately apparent to students of political theory or philosophy. Rather, the core concern of Party/Politics is with sources of political imagination that inform various expressions of black politics. His play on the word "party" is designed to signal this shift. Hanchard sees in this term the fusion of very different sensibilities concerning the meaning of politics – that of the political "party" so revered within Western social science as well as the concept of "party" as festivity within popular culture.

Party/Politics's eight chapters discuss a range of themes and theoretical perspectives that engage the question, "what does contemporary political and social theory look like when viewed from a vantage point of a black life-world?" Part I's three chapters examine definitions and forms of politics. Chapter 2, titled "A Theory of Quotidian Politics," presents a provocative theorization of everyday politics that strives to account for the full range of political possibilities, from macro- and macro-level politics as well as strategies of acquiescence and resistance. The two chapters in Part II survey two disparate sites of politics, one a discussion of contemporary black intellectual production and the other a cultural studies-inflected exploration of fiction. The two concluding chapters cast a wider net by examining themes of black internationalism. Chapter 8 is an especially strong treatment of contemporary black politics, as Hanchard points out how transnational black political actors and organizations had to shift their focus away from the political objectives of the pervious era – apartheid and civil rights – toward matters of human rights, authoritarianism, AIDS and similar problems disproportionately affecting African and African-derived populations. He asks, what does this shift signal for black politics and black political thought?

Hanchard makes several important claims in this book. For one, he points out how, in various national societies, black politics first emerged in spheres of society not categorized as political. This claim enables him to explore how a history of black protest and resistance outside the formal spheres of Western politics underscores the manner in which the very definitions of political versus nonpolitical are themselves political constructs. For another, Hanchard argues that the realm commonly referred to as culture, specifically the arts and aesthetic practices as broadly defined in Western societies, is already suffused with the workings of the political. Challenging this assumption enables him to contest what he sees an analytical error in studies of politics and culture, namely, treating culture as a separate sphere from the political, rather than as a separate sphere from the state. Hanchard also claims that reconfiguring the relationship between politics and culture enables us to see how power dynamics and political communities determine how culture becomes political. Black culture provides an especially compelling site for studying this phenomenon.

Despite Party/Politics's ambitious goals, there is room for improvement. Although Hanchard presents a compelling theoretical argument about quotidian black politics early in the book, subsequent chapters fail to build upon and further develop the model. After such a heavy dose of wading through mainstream political theory as well as grappling with the complexity of Hanchard's model of quotidian politics, it is disconcerting to have these ideas seemingly vanish. Instead, it is left to the reader to make the myriad connections that I suspect Hanchard assumes that his readers will see through case studies and fiction. Yet the cases do not speak for themselves, and as a result, Party/Politics's chapters more closely resemble a loosely bundled discussion of related topics as opposed to a seamless argument that develops the theory of quotidian politics.

Another area for improvement concerns the treatment of the substance of black politics. Hanchard is clear about what this project is not: it is neither a history of political parties in the black world nor a history of black thinkers. Yet by the end of the volume, one would hope to see a more...