Modernity, autochthony and the Ivorian Nation. The end of a century in Ivory Coast

In the mid-1990’s, Ivory Coast witnessed the rise of the ideology of ivoirité, a conception of citizenship based on autochthonous origins. Ivoirité was elaborated by a group of Ivorian intellectuals in the context of the political struggle opposing Henry Konan Bedié to Alassane Ouattara in the succession to the late president Houphouët-Boigny. Through the tactic use of the rhetorics of ivoirité, Ouattara was depicted by his adversaries as a “Burkinabé” trying to rule the country. Going beyond this tactic aspect, the article addresses the ideological relations linking ivoirité to a “project of a Ivorian liberal society” explicitly constructed by the same intellectuals. These relations contributed to the emergence, in the Ivorian public space, of a discourse establishing self-evident, hegemonic connections between notions like autochthony, modernity, nationality and biopolitical concepts like ‘population’, ‘immigration’, ‘security’ and ‘resources’. Such an emergence is framed in two complementary perspectives: on the one hand focusing its graft on the historical continuity of the political-economic strategies and population policies implemented by colonial governamentality and by postcolonial elites. On the other hand, using Giorgio Agamben’s critical enquiry on citizenship and nationality, the implications of the ivoirité intellectuals in the construction of a national bios is brought to light, and so their contribute to the singling out of a paradigmatic form of bare life.