Africa: The Politics of Suffering and Smiling

Literature Review from the year 2009 in the subject African Studies - Literature, grade: A, University of Basel (Europainstitute), course: Europa-Kolloquium, language: English, abstract: On 14th May of 2009 at Europainstitut Basel Patrick Chabal, professor at King's College London, presented his book "Africa: The Politics of Suffering and Smiling". The former scholar of Harvard and Cambridge has written or was cowriter for such books as Cultures Troubles (2006); Africa Works (1999); Power in Africa (1992 and 1994) and Amílcar Cabral (1982 and 2003). The question usually asked about Africa: Why people suffer? Suffer from poverty, violence, wars... Patrick Chabal asks more simple questions about these complex matters: How do people define who they are? Where do they belong? What do they believe? How do they struggle to survive and improve their lives? What is the impact of illness and poverty? (EIB: 2009) In doing so Chabal proposes a radically different way of looking at politics of "suffer and smile" in Africa (Zed Books, 2008: 5). To write about Africa in objective way is challenging, but Patrick Chabal tries to deal with this hard task.