Sovereign excesses? Portraying postcolonial sovereigntyscapes

Abstract

This paper is offered as a contribution to postcolonial criticism of a central object of political geography: Conceptualisations of sovereignty and the territorial state. To that end, the paper reflects primarily on the consequences and nature of connections between Africa and the West as an entrée to rethinking wider representations of sovereignty. From this it argues that the supposed 'weakness' of certain African states might be interpreted as arising less from a lack or absence of authority and connection (including the presence of the West), but rather as an excess of certain forms of them. Through accounts focused on the trajectories of Angola and the Congo, the paper offers a deconstruction of the notion of failed or weak states and of sovereignty as an essence. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.