Jean Godefroy Bidima's La Palabre examines the traditional African institution of palaver as a way to create dialogue and open exchange in an effort to resolve conflict and promote democracy. In the wake of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and the gacaca courts in Rwanda, Bidima offers a compelling model of how to develop an African public space where dialogue can combat misunderstanding. This volume, which includes other essays on legal processes, cultural diversity, memory, and the internet in Africa, offers English-speaking readers the opportunity to become acquainted with a highly original and important postcolonial thinker. "Bidima has done a very important work here which deserves the critical attention of philosophers, political theorists, legal scholars as well the general public."― Journal of Modern African Studies "Opens promising vistas for legal and political discourse. Its multidisciplinary orientation and the erudition of the author make for a text that has crossover appeal."―Olúfémi Táíwò, Cornell University "Law and the Public Sphere in Africa presents a valuable philosophical argument that will most certainly be of interest to those working on the topics of postconflict justice, peacebuilding, and democratization in Africa."― African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review "[Casts] an invigorating light on law, politics, public language and social practice in modern Africa, raising searching questions not only about the heritage of colonialism but about the various postcolonial policies and theories that have aimed to overcome the problems of that heritage.85.2 May 2015"― Africa Jean Godefroy Bidima is Yvonne Arnoult Chair of French Studies at Tulane University. He is author of Théorie Critique et Modernité Négro-Africaine. Laura Hengehold is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Case Western Reserve University. She is author of The Body Problematic: Political Imagination in Kant and Foucault. Law and the Public Sphere in Africa La Palabre and Other Writings By Jean Godefroy Bidima, Laura Hengehold Indiana University Press Copyright © 2014 Indiana University Press All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-253-01124-4 Contents Acknowledgments \ Jean Godefroy Bidima, Foreword \ Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Preface to the English Edition: Justice, Deliberation, and the Democratic Public Sphere: Palabre and its Variations \ Jean Godefroy Bidima, Translator's Acknowledgments, Introduction: Speech, Belief, Power \ Laura Hengehold, La Palabre: The Legal Authority of Speech, Introduction, 1 The Public Space of Palabre, 2 A Political Paradigm, 3 Convergent Suspicions, 4 A Difficult Place in Political Thought, Conclusion, Other Essays, Rationalities and Legal Processes in Africa, Strategies for "Constructing Belief" in the African Public Sphere: "The Colonization of the Lifeworld", African Cultural Diversity in the Media, Books between African Memory and Anticipation, The Internet and the African Academic World, Notes, Works Cited, Index, About the Author and the Translator, CHAPTER 1 The Public Space of Palabre WHAT IS PALABRE ? Not just an exchange of words, but also a social drama, a procedure, and a series of human interactions. Palabre is therefore an act of staging [ mise en scène ], ordering, and putting into speech. The Space of Palabre The palabre is not held just anywhere, and since choosing a place is the object of a miniature palabre in its own right, the space of palabre becomes highly symbolic. The space of palabre marks the transformation of extension in space. By virtue of its continuity, extension presents a "substance which, once informed and transformed by humans, becomes space, i.e., form, suited for the purpose of signification by virtue of its articulations." An ordinary place is thus built up into a signifying space, converted into an arena where the same and the other, the here and the beyond, confront each other through and by means of human beings. A place signified in space is truly polemical, insofar as it allows the sacred to be distinguished by opposition to the profane, and the private as counterpart to the public. In palabre, signification first passes through space: for space is what expresses the relations between the subject, the law, and what is forbidden, or between culture and nature. Relation to the Law In certain cases, a palabre is held in the chief's house or at the home of the eldest person in the highest age class, or, finally, at the home of the eldest member of the lineage. Among the Beti of Cameroon and the Fang, the palabre takes place in the abââ (the large house for men, which serves both as living room and as courtroom) and never in or in front of a kitchen. The site of the palabre obeys the law of the father and indicates in a nutshell the preeminence of patriarchal ideology. In all these societies, filiation is patrilineal and the father is the true symb