Nostalgia for the Future: West Africa after the Cold War (review)

Nostalgia for the Future is about what happens when the post-colony is no longer defined as such; when the euphoria of post-independence is long gone; when the notion of autonomous and national leadership as something anchored in local consciousness has failed; when the demise of established dictatorships, with their ties to former colonial powers that have long colluded in keeping them alive and well, is called for by popular demand.

What happens when the political antagonisms of the Cold War –mirrored as they have been in the micro-politics of almost any region of the world – crumble and fall apart? In West Africa, the ensuing demise of the state as a viable entity for leadership and as a repository of power has brought in its wake a condition of anomie, exacerbated by the concurrent implantation of neo-liberal politics. Prodemocracy movements may have toppled dictatorships, but in the aftermath of such revolutions in sub-Saharan African nations the meaning of democracy has often echoed in a void.

The plight of Togo, the focus of Piot’s book, appears singularly unfortunate in this context, and the adage plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose appears to illustrate the incongruity of the country’s contemporary politics in a most ironic way. Despite numerous attempts at dislodging the forty-year dictatorship of Eyadema, it has become more engrained and proved an uncanny survivor, through the manipulation of electoral processes and by demonstrating a power of ‘adaptation’ to pressures from within. Eyadema the elder thus died a natural death while still in power, and subsequent manoeuvres by the political elite have seen him replaced by his younger son Faure, in this way allowing for the maintenance of a political autocracy with little popular support. The Togolese are not duped, however, and this recycling of the same old structures has resulted in an interface between the population at large and its political institutions that is purely performative. At regular intervals, people are reminded of the presence of official politics, but the reality of the state has become diffuse and diluted.

The disintegration of infrastructure has resulted in hardship and the struggle for a decent existence, and given rise to increasingly desultory and entrepreneurial coping strategies. Schools, development projects, religions old and new, policing and security are no longer run only in the name of the (now bankrupt) state. Piot deals specifically with how development agencies, charismatic churches, and lottery games purveyors dangling US visas to would-be migrants have become mushrooming businesses, entrepreneurial ventures where the attention of both subjects and fund raisers is up for grabs.

Piot’s is a highly inspiring and lively account of Togo and its neighbouring region, his narrative so vivid that the characters appear three-dimensional, springing alive to become directly palpable, popping out of the pages to populate the ethnography in a most evocative way. The author conveys, with great sympathy, the realities of the field, where the state no longer accounts for any kind of nation-building project, either pragmatic or metaphorical, and where the conjunction of this capitulation of government and the opportunistic expansion of neo-liberal players leaves local actors longing for another place to be, better landscapes, utopian futures where dreams can be fulfilled. This ‘nostalgia for the future’ makes the present more bearable, the depravity of the moment slightly less acute. Indeed, global connections come to the fore in the dreams about new landscapes.

It is also the case, however, that Piot sometimes takes the notion of a ‘break with the past’ too far. When describing the current performative aspect of state politics, he argues that this is a departure from how things used to be prior to prodemocracy riots, as traditionalist villages were then simply extensions of government, subdued through indirect rule and devolved leadership. There is here a deep contradiction, in that the protests so vociferously enacted echoed deep-seated resentment of...