The process of subjectivation as a site of resistance – for the privileged: the case of an aristocratic Peul africanist

The paper opens with a reference to the French anthropologist George Balandier whose renewal of French anthropology was very much the result of the influence and work of his African partners such as Alioune Diop. Then, presenting examples from the autobiographic work of the Malian writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ (1900-1991) and a discussion with Kussum Aggarwal’s analysis of significant moments in the history of French Africanism, the paper argues that the works of Hampâté Bâ constitute an early example of a subtle but important discursive and epistemological resistance by describing the complexities of African processes of subjectivation during the French colonial period in West Africa.