Notes on 'Invisible Governance - The Art of African Micropolitics' by Hecht and Simone
1994, Autonomedia, New York

They divide most African observation into being either over-optimistic, or overwhelming pessimistic - nothing can be done.
- both of these viewpoints ignore "the means by which Africans have learned to compensate for the impossibility of their daily lives" (p.8)

"post-colonial, hybrid methods" similar to Chabal and Daloz's instrumentalization of disorder argument

the book aims "to locate complex and fundamentally ambivalent African social conditions" (p.8)

Hecht and Simone propose a post-modern perspective, they ask "How can Africa's circumstances inform and broaden Western post-modern languages [and]...how can the West apply itself more constructively for African's?" (p.9)

asserts that post independence Africa is about "more than token independence...[or] a return to the precolony" (p.11)

"The African continent is layered with multiple legacies from Europe and Asia. Through inter-African migrations and invasions, African societies have become skilled at synthesizing relevant epistemologies from divergent traditions" (p.11)

Appears to deny the possibility of meaningful social action, at least from within:
- on the crisis "There is seldom all the much that Africans can do about this situation. Resistance can be futile when no one is really in control and oppositions replace one in effective government with another" (p.13)

"The post-colonial African state is often little more than inflated ritual, with citizens playfully dramatizing their power or subordination. The post-colonial government is, for the most part, a hollow pretence, a regime of unreality" (p.12)

argue that challenges, contests in African neighbourhoods act to create "a provisional equanimity - a default that forms the informal framework for justice, morality and social balance" (p.13)

this is invisible governance: "the need to survive does not take precedence or swallow up the need to imagine, and where the need to imagine does not impede completely the ability to survive" (p.13)

"most Africans have endured next-to-impossible conditions not so much because of non-government entities but rather because of various micro political/cultural responses" (p.14)
- drawing on Bayart, it is these responses are broadly categorised as 'civil society', these are not just the religious groups, NGOs etc of the popular imagination, but the "myriad [of] invisible threads that weave the fabric of African society when nothing else appears to be holding them together" (p.14)

Achille Membe - civil society is more that just pro-state, or anti-state

"These cultural and micro-political activities undermine the social cohesion necessary for Africans to establish meaningful institutions. They can be seen as the very reason for Africa's stagnation and suffering. But in other ways, they point to Africa's potentials to not only to survive but restructure and re-invent itself within a context of global realities" (p.15)

adaptable informal communities "can compensate for the inability of international and government agencies to conceive and implement effective multi-dimensional policies such as undertaking Structural Adjustment Programmes while alleviating the resulting poverty" (15-16)
- "while inept and unstable governments come and go, these popular neighbourhoods mostly endure" (p.16)

for these communities, "marginalization become a source of....strength" and they,  in order to "survive from day to day must ward off the hopeless reality that objectivity is constantly trying to impose" (p.17)

colonial domination works through assigning "fixed definitions" (p.17) to their subjects, deliberating failing to understanding the realities of Africans

"Colonialism was a means for the West to redefine itself in a relationship to the world...[and it] has much to do with the West's efforts to change itself, to construct new kinds of economies and identities" (p.17)
- "by unsettling the others, the West was more able to settle into itself" (p.18) - similar to underdevelopment/dependency theory

the African is thus given a "'foreign' powerfulness", he is "an oppositional power" (to the West) - the weak "are strong by virtue of being weak" and African independence must undo this relationship which is what the chaotic neighbourhoods do - even if, in doing so they "hinder Africa's economic development" (p16-17)

Africa societies are underdeveloped at the hands of the West, but they are also "slipping further out of either comprehension of control" (p.19)

opportunism - e.g. artificial borders slicing Yorubaland is a negative thing, but the border provides economic opportunities for trade/smuggling etc

the state may appear powerful because of rituals etc 
- "But the pomposity of civil/state interactions intensifies the abstraction of power and thus limits its points of contact with the concrete details of everyday life" (drawing from Membe)
- the state is, in part, unable to broadcast power because it is unable to establish clear enemies" (23) 

Africa has not "lost its 'traditions'" but allowed them to take their own course
- while this hampers the development of institutions and ideologies, "Africans may, in the long run, be well-prepared to act in a future devoid of national or international cohesiveness - a world of inter-dependent...neighbourhooods which, like multi-national corporations, blur the meanings of borders and ideologies"
- thus "African socio-cultural practices...are a new form of political training"

Stories/narratives in Africa contain many meanings for many purposes, with all sorts of contradictions
- above all the discourse creates/sustains connections across "large physical and cultural terrain" (p.27) these structures "need to be constantly articulated" (p.28) in non-states

"Differentiation can operate as a kind of homemade division of labor (sic) where individual and groups expand their activities, knowledge and sources of information, often without appearing to do so" (p.30)

The power of "African colonialism was...[that it] disrupt[ed] the wide ranging interactions that often existed among communities and peoples across often vast distances" (p.31)
- rigid divisions prevented African fluidity

Bhabha - Christian mission engagement with Africa justified by "the universality of its moral authority" (p.32), yet to succeed it needed to differentiate Africans

Highlights the importance "the West's need to dominate the native" historically.  This is denied "within the world-views of modernism, liberalism, humanism and universalism" thus "it is difficult to see how the relationship between the West and Africa has really changed" (p.35)

on Globalisation - "the postcolony is [both] more trapped by and more removed from Western agendas" (p.35)

discusses a broad desire to "upend and enlarge every conceivable social, political and economic relationship thus Africa's terrain of struggle is as much spiritual and moral as political and economic" (p.36)

the plurality of societies is profitable - "an operational diversity" (p.36)
- e.g. Christianity - is both foreign (an "insidious incursion") but also African, used for African political purposes

it is "this incessant doubleness,...[this] ambiguity of reference and influence which makes the Africa post-colony postmodern" (p.37)