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A review by jacobinreads
A Certain Amount of Madness The Life, Politics and Legacies of Thomas Sankara by Amber Murrey
4.0
A great collection of essays about an understudied revolutionary, historical figure, and theoretician- whose legacy looms large over social movements, politics, and life throughout Africa. For a long time, Sankara has been living in the shadow of a clichéd comparasion to Ché Guevara, one which masks the specificity of his African 'post-colonial' moment, his deep commitment to the people, and his uniquely womanist-inflected thought. Study of Sankara has perhaps been limited because of his lack of theoretical writings , but his speeches, addresses, and actions have provided ample materials for this important contribution to the scholarship of the Burkinabè leader.
If you're already searching for material on this great revolutionary, you're probably interested enough for this book (or at least some of its essays) to be of interest to you.
The essays within range from contemporary analysis, to the theoretical, to the biographical. A valuable contribution to the library of anyone looking to study decolonial movements, African liberation, or mass movements and their relation to emancipatory or revolutionary politics.
The essays which concerned Sankara himself and his revolutionary government's relation with unions, social movements, and mass political participation all clarified the actual material and historical faults, foibles, and possibilities of Sankara. It is telling that a slightly distorted image of Sankara remains inspirational- attributing to him a mass participation that (mostly) remained only aspirational while he was in power. However, the analysis of the parallels between the mass movement and ideology that underlies historic and contemporary Sankarism is brilliant: the essential role of women in liberatory politics, the questioning of established hegemonies, the fundamental pan-Africanist/decolonial challenge to the international system of debt and finance, food sovereignty, the contradictions of petty bourgeois and trade union consciousness in the revolutionary movement, the (potential) antagonism between a politics of class and a politics of anti-imperialism, the role of the people in constructing a "democratic and popular revolution"... incredible material to work with in this book.
If you're already searching for material on this great revolutionary, you're probably interested enough for this book (or at least some of its essays) to be of interest to you.
The essays within range from contemporary analysis, to the theoretical, to the biographical. A valuable contribution to the library of anyone looking to study decolonial movements, African liberation, or mass movements and their relation to emancipatory or revolutionary politics.
The essays which concerned Sankara himself and his revolutionary government's relation with unions, social movements, and mass political participation all clarified the actual material and historical faults, foibles, and possibilities of Sankara. It is telling that a slightly distorted image of Sankara remains inspirational- attributing to him a mass participation that (mostly) remained only aspirational while he was in power. However, the analysis of the parallels between the mass movement and ideology that underlies historic and contemporary Sankarism is brilliant: the essential role of women in liberatory politics, the questioning of established hegemonies, the fundamental pan-Africanist/decolonial challenge to the international system of debt and finance, food sovereignty, the contradictions of petty bourgeois and trade union consciousness in the revolutionary movement, the (potential) antagonism between a politics of class and a politics of anti-imperialism, the role of the people in constructing a "democratic and popular revolution"... incredible material to work with in this book.