Monday, March 29, 2010

The Frankenstate

You might have noticed a lull in activity on DSSFeed. In my case, its because I have been working tirelessly on my thesis. Holding a full time job and writing a thesis isn't advisable, but I suppose its doable. You just have to be willing to sacrifice some things in your life, like sunlight, your health, and relationships with your friends and family. Such minor things can be overlooked I suppose.

Well I handed in a draft thesis, and subsequently imbibed a few drafts to celebrate. (see what I did there?)

My thesis is on the post colonial state in Africa. The vast majority of states on the continent were formed by western powers who left the continent in hast after decolonization, and left the artificial borders they drew.

Henry Kissinger comments on these borders

The colonial powers often found it useful to divide up ethnic or tribal groups in order to complicate the emergence of a unified opposition to imperial rule.
Lord Salisbury commented at a dinner party on colonialism
(we were) drawing lines upon maps where no white man’s foot ever trod; we have been giving away mountains and rivers and lakes to each other, only hindered by the small impediment that we never knew exactly where the mountains and rivers and lakes were.
Such methods were useful for the colonists, but terrible for the people on the continent of Africa. These borders mashed together cultures and nationalities that were traditional rivals. After the colonial powers left, the disparate groups often engaged in civil conflict, resulting in the death and displacement of millions.

I decided it was best to coin a new term to designate these states. In my reading I didn't find a term I liked, or that even described the issue all that well. In my thesis I write -

I propose the use a different term to describe these African states. The term Frankenstate seems to be a more apt term to describe the post colonial African state. Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein, chronicles the life of a scientist that meddles in the fairs of the divine by creating life. Victor Frankenstein pursued creating life with the noblest of intentions; he sought to discover the secret to life to end the pain and misery of death. Instead the result was a disfigured monster, “a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome, yet appalling hideousness.” Like Frankenstein’s monster, post colonial African states have become unwieldy, with leadership that pursues the most carnal desires, murdering and pillaging without recourse. They are heterogeneous in nature, stitched together only by their western Prometheus who has systematically neglected responsibility for their creation.

The remaining thesis investigates the history of Sudan and Somalia, and how they relate to solving the problem of the Frankenstate. I'll save those conclusions for later!

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Missouri State University’s Department of Defense and Strategic Studies (DSS), located in Fairfax, VA, provides professional, graduate-level education in national security policy; foreign policy; arms control; missile proliferation; international security affairs; defense policy analysis, planning and programs; and intelligence analysis.

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