|
Disciplinary regime,
neo-liberal bio-power and alienation of national
sovereignty in Cameroon: Political economy of the imprisoned
body
Alfred Ndi
University of Yaounde I, Ecole Normale Supérieur Bambili-Bamenda,
Republic of Cameroon. E-mail:
alfredndi@yahoo.com
Accepted
22 September, 2009 |
|
This study found out that Cameroon’s national sovereignty and
prospects of development were alienated because
globalization came to most African countries in the 1980s as
a form of capitalist power with new norms that humanized
disciplinary institutions in the country. It invaded all the
vital sectors of the population’s life and rendered the
state apparatus deviant. This power system then enabled
proponents of the free market in the west to deploy
expansionist strategies of neoliberal capitalism such as
structural adjustment programmes, deregulation,
privatization, good governance, poverty eradication papers
and so on. Global bio-power was thus crafted on claims of
provision of social welfare and means of productivity of the
people and their safety, as against state mechanisms of
mutilation and surveillance of the body. It was more
sensitive to the individual’s perspective, his human rights,
rehabilitation and new knowledge systems of normalization.
Global power decentralized and pluralized the sources of its
institutional knowledge so that no single state authority
could have autonomous and self-regulating authority. It
co-operated with the Cameroonian subject instead of
contesting his standpoint. It created new ‘scapes, which
appeared to empower society while at the same time, they
merely served to expand the legitimacy of neoliberal
capitalism. The paper ends with three suggested strategic
policies to contain the ill-effects of globalization.
Key
words:
Disciplinary regime, globalization, bio-power, alienation of
sovereignty, underdevelopment, neoliberal capitalism, body. |
