Diasporic Politics, Transnational Media Circulation,
and the Multifocality of Côte d’Ivoire
KAREN A. MORRIS
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Abstract
This article proposes a framework of “multifocality” to think about the role of place
within the national political cultures of postcolonies with active migrant and diasporic
communities abroad. I build my argument on an ethnographic exploration of political
activism among networks of Ivorians living in North America, Europe, and Africa
during the last twelve years of civil strife in Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa. Tracing media
circulation and political party organizing within and across several continents, I show
how the political culture of the Ivorian nation arises, exists, and is negotiated within a
number of non-connected places (multiple foci) both within and beyond the ofﬁcial
territory of the nation-state. Activists and government ofﬁcials travel to, live in, and
shape sites within a number of nation-state territories in order to be in the middle of
Ivorian politics. My analysis underscores the need for more theoretical attention to the
speciﬁc and often uneven ways in which the political structures of many postcolonies
are being re-territorialized through transnational forms of public culture. The recent
conﬂict in Côte d’Ivoire—a conﬂict centered around questions of national belonging
based on people’s relationships with the national territory—offers a particularly interesting
case study through which to think about relationships between national political
communities and nation-state territories. As participants mobilize resources in certain
locations while dodging place-based limitations of others, the multifocality of Ivorian
political discourse emerges as key to its negotiation. [Postcolonialism, nationalism,
politics, diaspora, media, Côte d’Ivoire].
Introduction
A
s Côte d’Ivoire celebrated its 50th
year of independence in 2011, an
embattled presidential election and period of civil unrest once
again launched the country into the headlines of newspapers
around the world. Ivorians reading the headlines from within the U.S.
were quick to recall the role of diasporic Ivorians in the previous election.
During the counting of ballots in 2000, then ruling military junta
and presidential hopeful General Robert Guéï learned that election
results were being updated hourly on an Ivorian website. Behind in the
polls, Guéï sent soldiers to destroy what he believed to be the source of
the postings: computers at the headquarters of the oppositional party
Rassemblement des Républicaines (RDR). But Guéï could not stop the
dissemination of results because they were being input into a computer
outside the country. Like many Ivorian oppositional organizations, the
RDR had located its website domains outside of Côte d’Ivoire. An insider
in the ballot counting room was calling in the results by cell phone to
bs_bs_banner
City & Society, Vol. 24, Issue 2, pp. 240–259, ISSN 0893-0465, eISSN 1548-744X. © 2012 by the American
Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-744X.2012.01077.x.
RDR members in Washington, D.C. who posted them online and circulated
the information to foreign news agencies. Their actions prevented
Guéï from throwing the election. When he claimed he had won, public
outrage and international scrutiny culminated in an uprising that ousted
him. Now, in 2012, an Ivorian who lived in the U.S. for several decades
has assumed the presidency of Côte d’Ivoire after winning the 2011
election with the assistance of his large support base of activists and
voters throughout North America, Africa, and Europe.1
His RDR party,
operated out of D.C. since 1994, has once again succeeded in ousting a
top ofﬁcial of Côte d’Ivoire.
Relationships between postcolonial nations and their politically and
economically active diaspora have received a great deal of attention from
scholars, governments, and policy makers in the last two decades (Bernal
2004; Grewal 2005; Vertovec 2011). While postcolonies have long been
governed by Western-educated native elites and international institutions,
new forms of wide–scale political, economic, and social activities
that cross nation–state borders mark a signiﬁcant departure from the ﬁrst
several decades of postcoloniality (Hansen and Stepputat 2005; Piot
2010). Both elites and non–elites migrating to wealthier countries in
record numbers have found ways to simultaneously participate in the
political economies of their home and host nations (Leonard 2007; Ong
2006; Smith and Bakker 2007; Stephen 2007). They engage in their
homelands’ political affairs in real–time, travel more cheaply between
host and homelands, and take advantage of “home” government outreach
programs to diasporic citizens such as dual nationality, citizenship
for second generation expatriates, absentee voting, ﬁnancial incentives,
and tax breaks.
Such new forms of governance have ushered in new ways in which
national politics are understood to be territorialized. Many nations’
political structures increasingly appear to be reconﬁgured as not simply
negotiated by forces abroad, but actively located abroad. Scholars have
offered theoretical frameworks such as “long-distance nationalism”
(Glick Schiller and Fouron 2001); “politics beyond the nation-state”
(Duany 2002); “expanded nations” (Laguerre 2005); and “transnational
terrains of nationhood” (Bernal 2004) to describe the recent growth of
many postcolonial nations’ political cultures outside of their nation–
state’s borders. While these approaches have proven extremely useful,
they focus primarily on the social spaces, rather than physical locations,
in which people live and act (Duany 2011; Vertovec 2009:96) and, as a
result, paint newer forms of nationalism as expanding amorphously in
ways that are free ﬂowing and all inclusive.
I propose in this article a framework of “multifocality” to think about
the role of place within the national political cultures of postcolonies
with active migrant and diasporic communities abroad. I argue that the
political culture of many nations arises, exists, and is negotiated within a
number of central, physically non-connected places (multiple foci) both
within and beyond the ofﬁcial territory of the nation-state. The speciﬁc
ways in which political participants and discourses interact with, and
Both elites and
non–elites
migrating to
wealthier countries
have found ways
to simultaneously
participate in the
political economies
of their home and
host nations
Diasporic Politics,
Transnational
Media Circulation
241
shape spaces is key to multifocal politics. I build my argument on an
ethnographic exploration of political activism among networks of Ivorians
living in North America, Europe, and Africa during the last twelve
years of civil strife in Côte d’Ivoire. Between 1998-2001 and 2006-2010,
I conducted 21 months of ﬁeldwork among Ivorians on differing sides of
the conﬂict living in Washington, D.C. and in urban and rural areas of
Côte d’Ivoire who consume, produce, and inﬂuence news media coverage
of the crisis as a form of political action.
The recent conﬂict in Côte d’Ivoire—a conﬂict centered around
questions of national belonging based on people’s relationships with the
national territory—offers a particularly interesting case study through
which to think about relationships between national political cultures
and nation-state territories. The country ﬁrst entered into what has
become a prolonged period of crisis known as la crise ivoirienne in 1999. La
crise, which I describe in the following section, quickly came to be seen
as a humanitarian crisis negotiated under signiﬁcant pressure from representatives
of “the international community.” As a result, political
struggles over the nation have been increasingly fought through its
representation to “outsiders” via news coverage. Activists exchanging
news reports about la crise between Côte d’Ivoire, neighboring West
African countries, North America, and Europe have emerged as an
inﬂuential element of national politics.
In this article, I focus speciﬁcally on the circulation of print and
electronic newspapers among political networks in several continents to
illustrate a deeply nationalistic discourse that is territorialized within a
number of borders. The place-based characteristics of this form of political
discourse are key to its success. Participants mobilize resources and
people in certain locations while dodging the limitations of others.
Members of oppositional parties often locate themselves outside of the
boundaries of Côte d’Ivoire to take advantage of the Ivorian state’s
inability to suppress them. Government ofﬁcials travel to court powerful
foreign leaders and lobby for the support of international organizations.
All of the major Ivorian political parties have established bases in
wealthy Western countries to access cheaper and more accessible communication
technologies, reliable infrastructures and higher wages. The
resources and territories of a number of countries thus become inextricably
incorporated into the terrain of the Ivorian nation’s politics.
Political culture is territorialized within pockets of political activity
inside the borders of Côte d’Ivoire as well. Since the inception of the
Ivorian colony, certain spaces within the territory have been politically
and economically valued at the expense of others. Within la crise, multifocal
politics have served as a device to exclude certain places (and the
people within them) from the right to participate in national discourse.
Areas predominantly inhabited by people deemed “foreigners” or “questionable
nationals” have become sites in which Ivorian political discourse
is not thought to be meaningfully produced. The notion of a
multifocal terrain for national politics can allow us to see the geography
of this inﬂuential form of public culture as a smattering of polka dots
City & Society
242
rather than one large balloon or ink blot that spans all areas evenly. The
political scape can be traced through a number of anatomically distinct
nodes within and beyond the nation–state territory that together constitute
the nation’s political geography. Activists and government ofﬁcials
travel to, live in, and shape spaces within a number of nation-state
territories in order to be in the middle of Ivorian politics.
Multifocality departs from concepts of “multi–sitedness” in that it
values each node as equally central (though not necessarily equal in size
or amount of activity). The multi–sitedness of many postcolonial political
cultures has intensiﬁed to a point of becoming multifocal. National public
culture lacks a clear, single source of origin (i.e. is not seen to emanate
primarily from the nation–state territory). Rather, it is understood to
originate within locations outside of the nation–state territory just as
much as from inside. It is centered within foci scattered across several
nation–states with the “home” territory no longer privileged above all
others. Signiﬁcantly, these foci change over time as situations, resources,
needs and participants change and move, so that the relationship of the
nation’s politics to territory constantly shifts. As Ivorians territorialize
national political culture through their activity, it emerges within different
foci at different moments. My analysis underscores the need for more
theoretical attention to the speciﬁc, and often uneven ways in which the
political structures of many postcolonies are being re-territorialized
through transnational forms of public culture. A framework of multifocality
allows us to consider the signiﬁcance of space and the making of
“place” (Gupta and Ferguson 1997) within political processes.
In the following sections, I trace media circulation and political party
organizing within and across several continents to illustrate how Ivorian
national politics is impossible to localize within one central territory or
“place.” Rather, it simultaneously arises within a number of non–
connected foci. First, I offer a brief history of the nation, la crise, and the
role of Ivorians abroad. Second, I examine the dramatic increase of
media circulation among Ivorians as a form of national public culture
that strategically crosses borders. Third, I illustrate through the political
activities of Ivorians abroad how national public culture has become
multifocal. And ﬁnally, I discuss the negotiation of certain sites within
Côte d’Ivoire as signiﬁcant political foci while other areas are excluded.
The Ivorian nation in crisis
R
evolving around struggles for the presidency among longtime political
players in the midst of economic crisis and a transition to a
democratic system, la crise has become a crisis of national identity
with deep roots in the country’s colonial and postcolonial political
economy (Dozon 2000; McGovern 2011; Zolberg 1969:4). Controversies
over who can claim citizenship, own land, vote, and run for elected
ofﬁce, can be traced back to the colony’s early days (Banégas and
Marshall-Fratani 2007) while emerging, through the recent conﬂict, in
newly articulated forms (Collett 2006; Newell 2012).
Activists and
government
ofﬁcials travel to,
live in, and shape
spaces within
a number of
nation-state
territories in order
to be in the middle
of Ivorian politics
Diasporic Politics,
Transnational
Media Circulation
243
First established as a French colony in 1893, the Republic of Côte
d’Ivoire became an independent nation in 1960. Félix HouphouëtBoigny,
the colony’s elected representative to the French Constituent
Assembly since 1945, ruled the newly sovereign nation as president for
more than thirty years under the one-party system of his Parti Democratique
de Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI). The nation grew to be the world’s largest
cocoa supplier, the ﬁfth largest supplier of coffee, and a key port for trade
between West Africa and Europe. It also became the primary destination
in West Africa for immigrants from neighboring countries seeking
employment. Things began to change in the late 1980s and 1990s with
the collapse of global cocoa and coffee prices, the devaluation of the
Communauté Financière Africaine (CFA) franc, and implementation of
IMF structural adjustment programs. Houphouët–Boigny legalized a
multi–party democratic system (which he continued to forcefully dominate)
in 1990 in response to domestic and international pressure.
Houphouët–Boigny’s death in 1993 and the country’s ﬁrst democratic
elections in 1995 prompted what has evolved into almost two
decades of struggle between four major political ﬁgures. The ﬁrst, Henri
Konan Bédié, was Houphouët–Boigny’s handpicked successor who
assumed the presidency in 1993, and again claimed the post in 1995 after
disqualifying his main opponents from running in the elections. Bédié’s
presidency was unpopular. He favored certain ethnic groups and
excluded others from his administration, mismanaged the national
economy, and alienated foreign investors. His ousting from power by his
own army in 1999 was widely celebrated. But Guéï, as the newly installed
junta, quickly fell from favor as he stalled elections and then tried to
claim the presidency despite his poor performance at the polls in the
2000 election. Upon Guéï’s ousting in 2000, Laurent Gbagbo, a longtime
critic of the PDCI administration and co–founder of the Front Populaire
Ivoirien (FPI) party, was declared president after it was determined that
he had the most votes of the few candidates Guéï had allowed to run.
Gbagbo’s ﬁrst years in ofﬁce were marked by civil strife as the supporters
of Alassane Ouattara, who had been disqualiﬁed from running in 2000,
refused to accept Gbagbo as the democratically elected president. Ouattara,
the man whom many Ivorians consider to be at the epicenter of la
crise, is a U.S. trained economist who spent 14 years in high–ranking
positions at the IMF and three years in the early 1990s as the ﬁrst Prime
Minister of Côte d’Ivoire (brought in by Houphouët–Boigny to “ﬁx” the
country’s economic troubles). Ouattara has striven for the Ivorian presidency
since 1993. After trying to claim the post upon Houphouët–
Boigny’s death, he founded the RDR and declared his candidacy for the
1995 and 2000 presidential elections. Both times his opponents blocked
him from running by questioning his national citizenship.
Like many inhabitants of Côte d’Ivoire, Ouattara traces his ancestral
lines across the nation’s contemporary borders to a neighboring West
African country and maintains dual citizenship and family ties in both.
Ouattara’s political opponents have focused on these ties to challenge his
eligibility for president. In the months leading up to the 1995 election,
City & Society
244
Bédié introduced a “cultural campaign” he called Ivoirité (Ivorianess)
that equated Ivorian citizenship with pre–colonial autochthony. The
descendents of the 60 ethnic groups believed to be indigenous to the
territory were deemed “Ivorians of stock” while the descendents of Africans
who, like Ouattara’s father, had migrated to the territory since the
creation of the colony were deﬁned as “Circumstantial Ivorians” or
“foreigners.”
Bédié’s notion of Ivoirité exploited existing tensions over belonging
and rights to land inscribed in the history of the country’s agrarian
colonization that differentiated “autochones” (those seen to be originating
‘from the soil’) in the rural zones hosting coffee and cocoa plantations
from “allocthones” (those originating from ‘outside’) brought in by colonists
from neighboring colonies as laborers (Chauveau 2000; MarshallFratani
2006). While Houphouët-Boigny had instituted an “open door”
policy for migrant laborers in the country that ostensibly granted them
rights to vote and become citizens, members of his PDCI party held
differing viewpoints on the requirements necessary to be recognized as
“Côteivoirien” with rights to land (McGovern 2011:25). Meanwhile,
Houphouët-Boigny’s organization of the political economy of plantation
agriculture created inequalities in the Ivorian southwest that remained,
until the 1990s, limited to economic competition and struggles over land
rights between local populations and migrants (Dembélé 2003; McGovern
2011:26). Bédié’s Ivoirité campaign changed the landscape of these
longstanding struggles by systemizing and sensationalizing a radical,
political and cultural opposition between “Ivorians” and “foreigners”
(Dembélé 2002). The declaration of Ouattara as a foreigner brought into
question the citizenship of others whose ancestral lines branched across
national borders. Bédié provoked widespread civil strife by targeting
“foreigners” (estimated by his government to account for 40 percent of
the population) as the cause of the country’s economic troubles and
encouraging unemployed Ivorians to “return to their land” to reclaim it
from the foreigners cultivating it. He also changed the electoral code to
stipulate that only “proven” Ivorian citizens could vote in the 2000
election.
Things began to rapidly accelerate after Bédié’s ousting. Guéï built
on his predecessor’s Ivoirité campaign by passing a Constitutional referendum
that restricted presidential candidacy to those who could prove
both their father and mother’s Ivorian citizenship. Guéï, and later
Gbagbo, used the referendum to disqualify Ouattara on the basis of his
“doubtful nationality.” Contestations over citizenship increasingly
appeared to fall along regional, ethnic, and religious divides that had not
previously been invoked (Collett 2006). Foreign press reports began to
describe the crisis in terms of “Southern Christian Ivorians of Akan and
Baoule ethnic groups” against “Northern Dioula Muslims” believed to
support Ouattara.2
In 2002, self–identiﬁed “rebels” with no ofﬁcial relationship
to the RDR (ﬁrst known as the Mouvement Patriotique de Côte
d’Ivoire, or MPCI, and more recently as part of the Forces Nouvelles des
Côte d’Ivoire or FNCI) gained control over the northern half of the
Contestations over
citizenship
increasingly
appeared to fall
along regional,
ethnic, and
religious divides
that had not
previously been
invoked
Diasporic Politics,
Transnational
Media Circulation
245
country. They demanded recognition of all of the country’s inhabitants as
Ivorian. Fighting between the government and MPCI intensiﬁed into a
civil war with the country split along a North / South divide.
Although Gbagbo agreed to peace accords in 2003 and 2005 that
called for a power–sharing government between the FPI, FNCI, RDR,
and PDCI, civil unrest continued and the new government never
emerged. Gbagbo repeatedly postponed the presidential elections scheduled
for 2005 until 2011, citing lack of disarmament on both sides and
disagreement over the registration of “eligible” citizens to vote. The
country continued to ﬂuctuate within a complex pattern of “neither
peace nor war” in which the threat of violence was always present
(McGovern 2011:171). The FNCI began to ally with the RDR as Gbagbo’s
supporters were accused of widespread human rights violations.
When elections took place in October and November 2010, Ouattara
ran for the ﬁrst time, allowed by Gbagbo in response to pressure
from the UN. Gbagbo’s refusal to recognize Ouattara as the winner
(after discarding vote counts from areas he said included votes of
fraudulent citizens) sparked a dramatic standoff that lasted ﬁve months
and involved the deaths of over 3,000 people and displacement of an
estimated 800,000 people.3
The ﬁnal “Battle for Abidjan” between
Gbagbo and Ouattara supporters culminated in French and UN military
involvement, Gbagbo’s arrest, and Ouattara’s installment as the new
president.
The installment of a new president who lived in the U.S. for the
better part of 35 years highlights the inﬂuential role of Ivorians abroad
within the past, present, and future of the Ivorian nation. Elite Ivorians
educated in Europe (and more recently North America) have occupied
top governmental posts since the colonial period while maintaining
residences and political networks abroad. Today the Ivorian population
outside of Côte d’Ivoire is much larger and more heterogeneous than in
the past, with an increasing number of non–elites, refugees, and asylum
seekers. It has recently been estimated that 53,000 Ivorians live in
Europe with the highest concentrations in France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland,
Spain, and the United Kingdom (World Bank 2007:86). The
U.S. Embassy in Côte d’Ivoire estimates that 25,000 Ivorians live in the
U.S., with the majority living in New York, D.C., Atlanta, New Jersey,
and Philadelphia.4
Smaller communities can be found in Burkina Faso,
Canada, Senegal, and South Africa.
Large numbers of Ivorians began to migrate to the U.S. in the 1990s
as the economy of Côte d’Ivoire faltered and many became disenchanted
with France. While an earlier wave of Ivorians in the U.S. consisted
mostly of elites on student visas from the 1960s–1980s, it was the second
wave of non–elites arriving on temporary visas in the 1990s and 2000s
that created today’s inﬂuential community. Many Ivorians in the U.S.
today are elite and highly educated, but the new majority tends to be
ﬁrst–generation immigrants in search of jobs. Many have overstayed
their visa limits and live as non–residents, although a growing number
are obtaining U.S. citizenship. The Ivorian population in the U.S. is
City & Society
246
strikingly more male than female, and younger rather than older, with
the median age being between 22-35 years old. Many Ivorians of both
higher and lower classes see their sojourn as temporary and plan to one
day return to Côte d’Ivoire “to retire” with an elevated social and economic
status (Newell 2005). Perhaps as a result of these plans, they often
have limited English ﬂuency and socialize predominantly in Francophone
African circles. At the same time, they are entrenched in the
economies and infrastructures of their host areas in both high paying,
powerful jobs and informal, often undocumented work.
Media circulation between diaspora and
homeland as national public culture
I
t is 2001, a year and a half after Gbagbo and his FPI party came into
power, and 23 young students and professionals have gathered in a
home in D.C. for a meeting of Côte d’Ivoire Coalition (CIC). Funded by
the FPI party, the association dedicates itself in its bylaws to “countering
the negative image of Côte d’Ivoire and its government in the Western
press.” Members give interviews on la crise to American news publications,
run letter–writing campaigns to major newspapers in the U.S. and
Europe, and intercept “false news reports” online. It is a typical CIC
meeting. Several members are huddled around a computer where Olivier,
a manager at a satellite communications ﬁrm in D.C., navigates between
websites featuring news, video, and commentaries on Côte d’Ivoire.5
Olivier produces a ﬂash drive from his pocket to record a video of a rally.
He clicks over to Abidjan.net, a website created by Ivorian M.B.A.
students in San Diego which has become the most highly–trafﬁcked site
for Ivorian news, culture, and politics. A quick search of the political
forums reveals a post claiming that the Ivorian prime minister had been
prevented from entering an IMF building in D.C. by protesters throwing
eggs at him. Olivier reads the article aloud and ﬁres off his own response,
typing “menteurs, liars, I was there and le PM n’etaient pas empeché”
[Liars, I was there and the Prime Minister wasn’t prevented from entering].
Olivier and his wife recently had appeared in a story printed in Côte
d’Ivoire by the FPI newspaper Notre Voie after they protested a speech by
Ouattara at The Freedom Forum, an organization in Arlington, Virginia
promoting free speech. A photograph showed them hoisting over their
heads documents they claimed would prove Ouattara was a national of
Burkina Faso.
Franck, a journalist for Notre Voie stationed in the U.S., is in town
to cover a visit by the First Lady of Côte d’Ivoire. At the CIC meeting,
he worries that Gbagbo doesn’t realize “the importance of aggressive
public relations in the international arena.” The RDR party, he says, has
capitalized on Ouattara’s knowledge of “how things work” in the U.S.
to gain favorable coverage in the Western press. Ouattara had recently
answered questions about la crise during a formal chat session on
CNN.com, and one of his supporters had published an opinion piece in
The RDR party,
he says, has
capitalized on
Ouattara’s
knowledge of
“how things work”
in the U.S. to
gain favorable
coverage in the
Western press
Diasporic Politics,
Transnational
Media Circulation
247
Le Monde. “Il faut etre addicte” (it is necessary to be an addict), Franck
says, to les nouvelles (the news) in order to stay ahead in politics.
In this section, I examine the dramatic increase of transnational
media circulation among Ivorians during the crisis period as a deeply
nationalistic form of public culture that strategically crosses nation-state
borders. Networks of media producers, circulators, regulators, and consumers
located in a number of state territories have assumed urgency as a
key site for national politics in a new era of instability, and as a battleground
on which the nation and national community is negotiated
through its representation. Ivorians living outside of Côte d’Ivoire like to
talk about the stark contrast between today’s vibrant news circulation and
“the way it was before” the crisis began. La crise has become a moment for
the mobilization of new media and circulation practices to (1) take
advantage of the greatly increased coverage of Côte d’Ivoire in non–
Ivorian press; (2) ﬁll the spaces left by the breakdown of mass news
communication in the country; and (3) “play politics” within the politically
charged arena of Ivorian news circulation. European and North
American news coverage of the country has more than quadrupled while
blackouts of the state–dominated radio, television, printing press, and
telephone landlines have become common. Satellite communication
technologies remain operative during blackouts due to their privatization.
This has resulted in a major shift in political culture. Many Ivorians inside
the country now ﬁnd that they can best access news through cell phone
calls to friends and family living abroad with access to foreign news
reports. Ivorians outside the country routinely pull up Internet news sites
to tell their contacts in Côte d’Ivoire what is happening around them.
The Internet has become a celebrated channel through which Internautes
(net surfers) participate in what they call “the cyberpolitics of
Côte d’Ivoire.” Hundreds of new websites, chat rooms, and bulletin
boards have emerged while those pre-existing la crise received dramatic
overhauls with new “headlines” sections, political forums, and links to
Ivorian and foreign news sites. Activists mixing online and ofﬂine news
circulation from locations inside and outside of Côte d’Ivoire hope to
incite sympathetic action from both powerful non–Ivorians and fellow
Ivorians. While CIC activists lobbied for the ruling party’s interests
during Gbagbo’s term, those opposing his government struggled to
capture the attention of Western human rights organizations and government
leaders with the goal of having Gbagbo sanctioned, convicted
in a human rights tribunal, or forcefully removed. Oppositional activists
acted as informants for foreign reporters; authored opinion pieces
drawing on concepts of democracy and human rights for major publications
such as Le Monde and The New York Times; translated oppositional
websites into English; and disseminated secretly ﬁlmed videos
of government persecution. Gbagbo’s government responded by sending
high–ranking ofﬁcials on international media tours to give Western
correspondents special access interviews. Even now, as the ruling and
oppositional party positions have reversed with the swearing in of the
new Ouattara administration, activists on opposing sides continue to
City & Society
248
wage battles through news circulation. As illustrated by the pivotal role
of French and UN military force in Gbagbo’s removal from power,
activists are not at all unrealistic in strategizing to seize political power
over the postcolony through engagement with powerful foreign audiences
who can incapacitate or even dismantle a ruling government.
Individual activists also go to great lengths to shape the news consumed
by their fellow Ivorians. Some write articles and call in “scoops”
for their parties’ news publications. Others circulate different newspaper
accounts of the same event in order to “get the whole story.” Those
traveling between urban and rural areas of Côte d’Ivoire, neighboring
countries, Europe, and North America facilitate the hand to hand transfer
of whole newspapers, letters relaying news, news clippings, recordings
of television broadcasts, amateur videos, and photographs. Printouts of
online news stories hang in mosques and churches. Gbagbo’s government
routinely arrested Ivorians found to be circulating media “evidence” of
government transgressions and ﬁred Embassy employees abroad accused
of circulating anti–government news media. It remains to be seen how
Ouattara will deal with the oppositional media activism that has begun
to emerge around him. Already, there have been reports of pro-Gbagbo
newspapers and journalists being suppressed. A popular refrain I heard
during the ﬁrst several years of crisis, “now anyone can be a journalist,”
evokes the ways in which activists’ participation in news circulation has
served as a form of journalism and politics in its own right. Media
circulators, regulators, and consumers powerfully shape the Ivorian
nation through a politics of representation that crosses multiple nationstate
borders.
National Political Culture as Multifocal
I
t is 2008, nine years into la crise. As she drives to her job as a sales clerk
at a Nordstrom in D.C., Karidja Conde describes her experience as an
“active militant” of the RDR. Since arriving in 1995 to seek a degree
in computer programming, Karidja has been unable to ﬁnd a job related
to her degree and instead has held side jobs while dedicating her skills to
the RDR. As Commissaire à la Communication for the RDR in D.C.,
Karidja maintains the heavily visited D.C.–based RDR website
(www.rdrci.org), updating it several times a day. She also organizes rallies
for RDR militants in both the U.S. (in front of such places as the
Embassy of Côte d’Ivoire, the World Bank, and the White House) and in
Côte d’Ivoire. The RDR maintains an extensive network of more than 60
headquarters in 25 countries throughout North America, Europe, and
Africa.6
The Secretaire National du RDR oversees all militants à l’étranger
(militants abroad) by traveling between RDR Délégués Extérieurs (delegations
outside) while the RDR newspaper Le Patriote reports on their
activities. Délégués Extérieurs in wealthy areas are paired into jumellages,
or “twin” partnerships, with Délégués in Côte d’Ivoire. The D.C.
Délégué, for example, supports the Délégué in the impoverished town of
Kong with fundraisers and computer drives.
Diasporic Politics,
Transnational
Media Circulation
249
Karidja has found herself more central to Ivorian politics during
Gbagbo’s term through her activity outside of Côte d’Ivoire than she
might be if she lived within its borders. Her access to communication
technology that is exponentially cheaper and faster in the U.S. has been
crucial to the RDR’s success. The contacts Karidja and her colleagues
have established with press agencies and government ofﬁcials in North
America provide publicity opportunities for Ouattara that remain out of
reach for Gbagbo. Karidja has also found it easier to gain an audience
with ofﬁcials in Gbagbo’s administration during their visits to the U.S.
Using online forums and personal networks to locate traveling leaders,
and taking advantage of the lack of force available to them to suppress
protesters abroad, Karidja has made her opinions known in person to
Gbagbo, his wife, prime minister, and minister of ﬁnance by appearing at
their meetings in D.C.
In this section, I look at pockets of political activity outside of the
boundaries of Côte d’Ivoire to illustrate how Ivorian political culture is
centered within key foci on several continents. The RDR is not unique in
its multifocality outside of Côte d’Ivoire. The FPI was also founded
outside of Côte d’Ivoire (in France) and, along with the PDCI and FNCI,
operates through extensive networks of headquarters in several conti-
nents.7
The parties maintain their websites in a combination of locations
in the U.S., Côte d’Ivoire, and Europe. During the 2002-2003 civil war,
the MPCI site (now defunct) was maintained in France and Wisconsin.
Today the FNCI maintains its site (www.fninfo.ci/) in Amsterdam and
New York City. The FPI manages its party site (www.liberte.fpi.ci/) in
Abidjan, its newspaper site (www.notrevoie.com) in New York and Paris,
and its Facebook page in France. The PDCI operates its party site (www.
pdcirda.org) in France and its Facebook page in France and Abidjan. The
parties also submit also submit daily news stories to San Diego based
Abidjan.net and station journalists in key nodes outside of the country at
a cost of up to eight times the salary of journalists in Côte d’Ivoire.
The D.C. area serves as one of a number of foci for political affairs. It
hosts RDR, FPI, and FNCI headquarters and is widely recognized as
Ouattara’s political hometown. D.C. is home to over 30 Ivorian regional,
ethnic, religious and national associations. Association membership
numbers have increased almost tenfold since the crisis began, with Ivorians
of varying socioeconomic backgrounds paying annual fees of $35 to
$85. Associations play key roles within national politics, both as arenas
for news exchange and as political tools. Members host visiting leaders
and post videos of meetings on U.S. based sites such as AbidjanTV.net
and IvoirTV.net for Ivorians in other locations to see.
The Union Fraternelle des Ivoiriens (UFI), formed in the 1990s to
support new Ivorian arrivals to D.C., has emerged as a key site through
which political struggles are actualized. As the largest ofﬁcially “apolitical”
association of Ivorians in D.C., it is granted special authority as
representative of the D.C. community by Ivorian diplomats, U.S. government
ofﬁcials, and American NGOs. The UFI board has access to the
Ivorian president and high level visiting government ofﬁcials and acts as
The parties
maintain their
websites in a
combination of
locations in the
U.S., Côte
d’Ivoire, and
Europe
City & Society
250
the ofﬁcial ﬁlter for information between the government, major political
parties, and Ivorian associations in D.C. As a result, leadership
positions in UFI are coveted and its bi-annual elections have become
sensational events covered by the domestic press in Côte d’Ivoire.
Activists incorporate a number of institutions, resources, and spaces
in the D.C. area into Ivorian political culture through their actions. Both
government and oppositional ofﬁcials make personal visits to U.S. government
agencies, the IMF, Intelsat (a satellite communications ﬁrm
geared toward the “developing” world), Amnesty International, Human
Rights Watch, and universities in the area. They claim as sites for Ivorian
politicking the ofﬁce buildings that house party headquarters, the rented
state park ﬁeldhouses that host party and association meetings; churches
and collectively rented apartments converted into “Ivorian” mosques;
private homes hosting communal satellite television news viewing; hotel
ballrooms used by traveling government ofﬁcials for meetings with Ivorians
abroad; the Embassy of Côte d’Ivoire; the front steps of the White
House and French Embassy which serve as sites for protests; and even the
cables and telephone lines used to circulate information. Activists, themselves,
are also deeply integrated into the D.C. political economy as
employees (often specializing in Ivorian and West Africa affairs) of the
IMF, UN, U.S. State Department, Voice of America, USAID, World
Bank, Intelsat, and area universities. Others fund their activities through
their entrenchment in the service sector of D.C. in a variety of jobs
(grocery store clerk, nanny, parking lot attendant) that might otherwise
seem to have little to do with the political affairs of a far-away African
nation. In so doing, they help to shape portions of the D.C. area’s
political economy, much like parts of New York have been seen to be
“Dominicanized” (Duany 2002:14) or made “Mexican” (Smith 2005) by
diasporic inhabitants.
During his term, Gbagbo institutionalized the role of people, economies,
activities, and spaces outside of the state territory within Ivorian
politics by creating new ofﬁces and positions in his administration. He
appointed ministers of “American Politics,” the “French–speaking
World,” and “International Institutions;” dedicated a special ofﬁce in
Abidjan to “Ivorians Abroad;” and based Special Advisors throughout
Europe and North America whose job was to “inspire” nationally focused
economic and political activity among Ivorians abroad. As he prepared
for the 2010 presidential elections, Gbagbo devoted special attention
to Ivorian political culture originating outside of the state territory.
He hosted in the presidential palace delegations of FPI “compatriots a
l’étranger” (compatriots abroad) and publicly thanked them for carrying
out his campaign abroad. At a 2010 colloquium in Geneva, Gbagbo’s
Deputy National Campaign Director Responsible for Ivorians Abroad
declared to his “Brothers and Sisters Abroad” that
“Geneva will be the starting point of the victory of Gbagbo . . . To you
all, campaign managers for our candidate abroad in Africa, Europe and
America, to your respective ofﬁces, directors of local campaigns in
Diasporic Politics,
Transnational
Media Circulation
251
different countries and the presidents of parties, associations and movements
to support the actions of President Laurent Gbagbo abroad,
thank you for your determination to make our country up wherever you
are . . . Remember that the campaign outside is as important as that
which takes place in Côte d’Ivoire.”
The Deputy’s words reﬂected an understanding of the nation’s political
culture as emanating from locations outside of the nation–state territory
just as much as from inside. Citizens shape and territorialize national
politics through forms of public culture like crisis news exchange and
multifocal politicking. As Karidja explained to me, politically active
Ivorians outside of Côte d’Ivoire consider themselves to be living smack
in the middle of Ivorian politics through their activism in a number of
state territories.
Multifocality within the Ivorian territory
I
t is 2010, and Oumar Ouattara, a law student in Washington, D.C., is
furious with the impact the political situation has had on his family in
both Abidjan and their village in the North. Oumar’s older brother,
Alajui makes his living driving a freight truck between Abidjan and
various regions in the national territory. Alajui’s wife had just travelled to
the family’s village for the birth of their child, and Oumar had sent gifts
and $2,000 in cash by way of a friend traveling to Côte d’Ivoire. The plan
was for Alajui to connect with Oumar’s friend in Abidjan to pick up and
then transport the goods to their village along the way to deliver desks to
a school nearby. However, Alajui has just sent back word through a
friend’s email account that police conﬁscated all of the gifts at a checkpoint
along his route. Thankfully, they had not found the cash hidden in
Alajui’s undershirt. The loss of the gifts is not a great surprise to Oumar,
but more of an annoyance. Whenever he speaks with his brother by
phone, he hears accounts of Alajui’s harassment by police during his
travels. They usually question Alajui’s Ivorian identity papers, claiming
they are fake. Alajui’s last name, Ouattara, a family name common for
Northern Dioula (and also, of course, the last name of Gbagbo’s infamous
political opponent in the upcoming 2010 election), is the butt of jokes.
When traveling south from trips to the Northern region, Alajui is often
told by police to “go back home” and refused passage until he pays
substantial bribes. Oumar explains to me that he had never been particularly
interested in Ivorian politics until he began to see their effect on
his friends and family. He is now an active member of the FNCI in D.C.
This section examines the valuing of certain sites in Côte d’Ivoire as
key political foci at the expense, and often forceful exclusion, of other
areas (and the people within them). I illustrate how political culture is
territorialized within pockets inside the nation-state’s borders in concert
with multifocal politicking outside. The political economy of Côte
d’Ivoire has been multifocal in its relationship to the nation-state territory
since the inception of the nation. The uneven way in which HouphouëtRemember
that the
campaign outside
is as important
as that which
takes place in
Côte d’Ivoire
City & Society
252
Boigny structured the nation’s infrastructure, economy, and governance
resulted in the social, political, and economic inequalities between different
regions that are now at the heart of la crise. The Northern region is
strikingly poor and disenfranchised in comparison with the South. The
cities of Abidjan, Yamoussoukro, and Boaké, and the cash crop plantations
of the west have long been valued as central to the national political
economy while areas in the North and Northwest were overlooked.
Struggles over land, resources, and political power that accompanied
the transition to a democratic multiple party system in the midst of
economic recession in the late 1990s led to contemporary contestations
over who constitutes “the people” of Côte d’Ivoire (Dozon 2000) possessing
“the right to participate in the struggle for resources” and, thus, in
the politics of the nation (Cutolo 2010:531). Villages have emerged as
foci of la crise in conﬂicting ways. Struggles over land have speciﬁcally
focused on rights to land in rural areas in which cash crops are grown.
Villages, as urban Ivorians’ homelands and sources of autochonous
citizenship (Chauveau 2000:94) in which large concentrations of
“non-Ivorian” migrant farmers now live, have been central to political
discourse (Kouamé 2009:127). As a result, rural areas have seen the most
brutal violent conﬂict between “autochthones” and “allochtones”
(Chauveau and Bobo 2003). Yet while villagers live, and sometimes ﬁght,
within key foci of the struggle, they are often excluded from other
forms of political participation. Ivorian newspapers and television broadcasts,
which reach villages in greatly diminished (and often delayed)
capacities, mock villagers’ “backwardness” and lack of understanding of
both politics and satellite communication technologies. Villagers are
acknowledged as being active within the political arena in certain ways,
while simultaneously excluded from other, more elite forms of discourse.
It is signiﬁcant to the framework of multifocality that struggles over
belonging to the national political community have focused on people’s
relationship to place. Notions of citizenship as based on autochony lend
themselves well to the imagining of a multifocal political landscape. Just
as Ivorians in locations outside of the nation-state territory focus their
patriotic energy on their homeland, so to are those deemed immigrants
and foreigners within the Ivorian territory expected to participate not in
Ivorian politics, but in the politics of their nations of origin. The multifocality
of political participation generates a sense that the national
political community, too, is multifocal. While most Ivorians outside of
Côte d’Ivoire are familiar with the term diaspora, they tend to refer to
themselves, and are referred to by those within the country, as either
Ivoiriens à l’étranger or, more frequently, members of the encompassing
communauté ivoirienne (Ivorian community), a term which is noteworthy
in that it privileges no one territory as the nation from which citizens
around the world are dispersed.
Just as national political culture is imagined by many Ivorians to be
multifocal in the way it incorporates locations and populations in
wealthier areas of the world, it can be seen to simultaneously and often
forcefully exclude large parts of the state territory and its inhabitants. For
Just as national
political culture is
imagined by many
Ivorians to be
multifocal, it can
be seen to
simultaneously
and often
forcefully exclude
large parts of the
state territory and
its inhabitants
Diasporic Politics,
Transnational
Media Circulation
253
many Ivorians viewing citizenship through the lens of Ivoirité, it is less
problematic to imagine their national community as territorialized in
ways that include members in nodes around the world than to picture it
as inclusive of those deemed to be “non-Ivorians” living within the
territory. Places inside of the country’s borders predominantly inhabited
by people deemed “foreigners” are seen as sites in which Ivorian political
discourse is not meaningfully or legitimately produced. In this way, multifocal
politicking serves as a way in which political citizenship is powerfully
negotiated through the exclusion of certain people and places
from the right to participate.
The making of “the North” as a place seen by those who subscribe to
notions of Ivoirité as external to legitimate Ivorian discourse, has gone
hand in hand with contestations over the national belonging of those
living in, or with ethnic or religious ties to, the North. As the crisis has
escalated, the Northern region increasingly has been imagined as home
to the immigrant, Muslim, and Dioula populations in Côte d’Ivoire and
the stronghold of rebel and oppositional political activism. Gbagbo’s
supporters consider the imagined geography of “the North” as present
within the nation-state territory but not, in any recognizable sense,
within the Ivorian political arena they engage. While Gbagbo’s government
could not ignore places like the Northwestern town of Odienné,
which emerged as a key site of both oppositional activity and military
suppression (Hellweg 2011:24), his supporters can refuse to acknowledge
the political activities of those within the region as truly “Ivorian.”
Members of the RDR and rebel coalition parties have expressed
outrage at their opponents’ attempts to redeﬁne the national community
as “tous sauf Nordistes” (everyone except for the Northerners). Rumors of
Northern secession circulated in the early 2000s and the mayor of Kong
brieﬂy raised the ﬂag of neighboring Burkina Faso over his town before
rebels seized control of the Northern half of the country and kept it
outside the state’s reach from 2002-2007. The “zone of conﬁdence,” a
territorial line patrolled by UN troops that divides the Northern and
Southern regions, continues to serve as a site of violent conﬂict, policing,
and political negotiation.
Of course, many of those who consider themselves, or are considered
by others, to be “Northerners” live and travel outside of the Northern
region so that the North is, in many ways, multifocal. Since the colonial
period, large numbers of Ivorians have migrated from the North to more
prosperous regions of the country to take advantage of the economic
resources, jobs, infrastructure, and education opportunities. A 2001
census conducted by the University of Abidjan found nearly two-thirds
of what it called the “Northerners of Côte d’Ivoire” living in regions
other than the North (Institut National de la Statistique 10). Areas
within villages and towns in which signiﬁcant numbers of “Northerners”
are concentrated have long been referred to as Dioualabougous. These
areas have been alternately ignored and targeted within the political
conﬂict. Gbagbo’s military regularly raided Dioualabougous in Abidjan
thought to host Northerners, immigrants, and oppositional activists.
City & Society
254
Throughout the conﬂict, people with seemingly foreign or Northern
family names, dress styles, or appearances living outside of the North
have experienced frequent harassment by police forces and their own
neighbors who tell them to go “home.”
During his term, Gbagbo went to great lengths to enforce long-held
perceptions of certain people as historically tied to place within the
national territory, while others were free of such territorial moorings. He
initiated the systematic destruction, at checkpoints on roads between
cities and villages, of the national identity papers of hundreds of thousands
of Ivorians suspected of being foreigners These checkpoints served
as signiﬁcant political foci in which people were forcefully “placed”
within disenfranchised and excluded areas of the national territory
through both refusal to pass and the destruction of documents that would
allow them to vote or travel.
The work of multifocal politicking as a device for exclusion within
the country has inspired much of the multifocal politics abroad in which
Northerners like Oumar Ouattara and others accused of “doubtful”
nationality engage. Within North American and European contexts,
their claim to both Ivorian citizenship and land rights in Côte d’Ivoire
are more readily acknowledged by inﬂuential people and organizations
operating with notions of national citizenship as based on birth rather
than ancestral origin.
Conclusion
I
n this article, I have argued that Ivorian political culture during la crise
has become multifocal in the way that it incorporates certain people
and places while excluding others. The multifocal framework I employ
aims to push beyond the Ivorian case study to inspire dialogue about new
spatializations of national political culture and citizenship. La crise marks
an important moment in the history of Côte d’Ivoire: what has been
called “the birth of a national political body” (Cutolo 2010:547) as part
of an “overdue drama of decolonization” (McGovern 2011:27) referred
to by Gbagbo’s supporters as the nation’s “second independence”
(Banégas and Marshall-Fratani 2007). The key issues at stake within the
Ivorian Crisis—national belonging, border control, immigration, and the
threat of foreign so-called “terrorists” evoke similar tensions around
the world (Geschiere 2009).
We are witnessing, in many corners of the world, a new period of
postcolonial nation building (Piot 2010; Sassen 2006) in which the
national political structures of many postcolonies are being dramatically
reconﬁgured within the context of neoliberal global capitalism, mass
migration, and debates over national citizenship and borders. Migration
and transnational forms of public culture can serve as strategic ways for
people disadvantaged by government policies to gain agency within their
societies of origin (de Bruijn 2007) while state actors develop new ways
to both contain and exploit transnational political ﬁelds and actors
(Coutin 2007; Fitzgerald 2008). Rather than becoming “deterritorialThe
work of
multifocal
politicking as a
device for
exclusion within
the country has
inspired much of
the multifocal
politics abroad
Diasporic Politics,
Transnational
Media Circulation
255
ized” in a way that makes place and territory appear less signiﬁcant than
social space, postcolonial nations’ political cultures and communities are
being re–territorialized within “old” nation–state boundaries in new
ways.
The framework of multifocality prompts us to think about the signiﬁcance
of both place and “place-making” (Gupta and Ferguson 1997)
within political struggle. Further, it repositions our approach to diasporic
and transnational populations as not necessarily displaced as they have so
often been theorized, but as placed in signiﬁcant ways. The ways in which
Ivorians within and outside of the country perceive themselves, and are
perceived by others, as signiﬁcantly “placed” within the national political
arena help to reveal which spaces in a number of territories are valued as
central and which are not. The areas often theorized as “host” and
“homelands” for migrant populations emerge not as separate and unrelated
locales, but rather as hosts to varying numbers of lateral, decentralized
nodes that are inextricably intertwined for those who inhabit them.
The interplay between negotiations of the nation in nodes inside and
outside of the nation-state’s borders opens up questions about the relationship
of national culture with space and place.
A lens of multifocality also provides a way to account for discontinuity
and temporality in the way that politics and participants relate to,
and negotiate, place. Social and spatial divisions are, of course, integral
to politics. Political processes hop, skip, and jump within and across a
variety of places in much the same way that economic networks in the
neoliberal world order have been observed to connect politically and
economically valued spaces around the world while excluding spaces in
between (Ferguson 2006).
As political discourse emerges within multiple foci at different
moments in time, the temporality of its territorialization becomes clear.
While many spaces within the greater D.C. area currently serve as foci,
their signiﬁcance may shift over time. A number of foci have already
emerged and faded away during the crisis period. The city of Brussels, for
example, sprang up as a key node between 2001-2003 when an Ivorian
human rights group ﬁled suit against Gbagbo in a tribunal of “universal
jurisdiction.” Ivorian attorneys, witnesses, and victims congregated in
Brussels in anticipation of a trial while events surrounding the lawsuit
dominated the Ivorian press. When Belgium closed the tribunal and
dismissed the case in 2003, most of the participants left Brussels and the
site became virtually irrelevant to Ivorian politics. This is just one
example of the ways in which the Ivorian political terrain constantly
shifts, as the people, resources, circumstances, and laws in different nodes
shift. Only time will tell if the striking multifocality of Ivorian politics is
contingent upon the crisis situation. At the moment, it seems almost
integral to both the object of political discussion and conditions under
which politicking is produced. Perhaps it will become less multifocal in
future years of peace as Ivorians ﬁnd themselves drawn to other, less
nationally focused pursuits. Or perhaps the relationship between the new
Ouattara administration and the far–ﬂung community that brought it
This is just one
example of the
ways in which the
Ivorian political
terrain constantly
shifts, as the
people, resources,
circumstances,
and laws
in different
nodes shift
City & Society
256
into power will strengthen further. The coming of age of a second
generation of non–elites abroad (today still school age and less focused
on Côte d’Ivoire than their parents) will likely have a signiﬁcant impact
on the political terrain. Whatever happens, it is safe to say the political
geography of Côte d’Ivoire will continue to undulate in bumpy and
uneven ways.
Notes
Acknowledgments. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for City & Society;
Maud Lavin, Patrick Rivers, members of the African Studies Workshop at the
University of Chicago, Purnima Mankekar, Paulla Ebron, and Sylvia Yanagisako for
their critical engagement, support, and inspiration. I owe a great debt of gratitude to
the families, individuals, and communities in Washington, D.C. and Côte d’Ivoire
who have generously participated in my research. Research for this paper has been
funded by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago through a Grainger Foundation
Faculty Research Grant and a Roger Brown Residency, and by Stanford University
through an O’Bie Shultz Research Travel Grant, a G.J Lieberman fellowship, and a
Mellon Fellowship.
1
Over 35,000 Ivorians abroad in over 24 countries were registered to vote in
2010 elections in Côte d’Ivoire.
2
The term Dioula has come to be used by many Ivorians as an umbrella term for
Ivorians believed to be from the North (most often ethnic Malinké or Senoufo) who
speak some version of the Dioula language.
3
Ouattara was recognized by the U.N. election observers and most of the
international community as having won 54 percent of the vote compared to Gbagbo’s
46 percent.
4
Personal communication with author, December 19, 2010.
5
In this article, I use pseudonyms for my interlocutors who are not public ﬁgures.
6
RDR headquarters can be found in Canada, France, Germany, Belgium, the
Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Italy, Denmark,
Spain, Russia, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire,
Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Senegal. In the U.S., the
RDR locates its ofﬁces in Chicago, New Jersey, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Brooklyn,
Manhattan, and Washington, D.C.
7
Within the U.S., the FPI is based in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, D.C.,
Delaware, San Diego, and Atlanta; the FNCI operates out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
New York, and D.C.; and the PDCI is active within New York and San Diego.
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