Nous. Exploring Border Violence through a Panafrican Feminist Research Perspective

On 21st February 2023, the Anti-Black, anti-migrant speech of Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed heralded a cruel persecution of Black migrants. Deadly police violence, deportations and social unrest escalated into a racist crisis in the weeks that followed which continues to this day. The anti-migrant and gendered dimension of the crisis points to the interconnection of race, patriarchy, and borders arising against the backdrop of EU border externalization. In my constructivist Grounded Theory on border violence in the Eurafrican border zone I explore these dimensions while taking the Black Panafrican migrant critique as a starting point that helps me to subvert the hegemony of Western categories of knowledge and critique.

The analysis of interviews with Black African no border activists and migration workers in Dakar, Niamey and Berlin shows that if we are to understand racial border violence in African contexts, we must take into account the multiplicity of entangled histories of race and thereby provincialize European colonialism and whiteness. However, to talk about racism among Africans reveals to be delicate. The reflexive interpretation of the data shows that the topic of racism in Africa is imbued with contradiction, irritation, and silence. Similar tensions arise in the face of other concepts I use when I enter the stage as an African Diasporic “postcolonial-feminist” from Berlin, i.e. colonialism, decolonization, and, especially, feminism.

What are the risks of racism in the postcolony? Why does the topic of feminism disturb the panafricanist talks I undertake with my interlocutors? My contribution discusses these conversational crises against the background of the postcolonial constructions of African identity, the Nous Africain-e-s (Us Africans), and the dominance of Eurocentric categories of critical knowledge which silences pathways of decolonization proposed by panafrican feminists and no border activists.