Foundations of African Perceptions on Security and Violence. Overlapping the Need for Peace with the Narratives of Struggle, a Safe Way or an African Way?

Abstract

"Would western defined security be an African security and would this reproduce, or develop, from indigenous African ontologies, so that African understanding of security and violence could actually bestow to the global peacekeeping actions? Considering this research question, focused on the understanding of security and violence in an African postcolonial and maybe de-colonial taxonomy, the present paper invites to reflect on the evolution of the concepts of security and violence in African scholarships, their connections with the sustainable African social development narratives that seem to monopolize the space of debates in African Studies. Moreover, the intentions are to explore the disruptions between the need for peace and the narratives of struggle in the context of a critical resistance to the global connecting and disconnecting biases that define the conceptual “security” and “violence”. This content analysis and critical look on the becoming of the term of violence, at the base of a typical evolution of the term security, in African literature or African focused debates, might contribute to defining that security and violence are floating terms, their understanding in an African taxonomy should be Africanized, being highlighted that security includes violence as inner boosting element, that allows for the two to be in a strange relationship, recalling for attentive consideration and critics on the application of Western inspired peacekeeping actions that do not take into account specific conditions such as territory and culture. Keywords: violence, security, (de) coloniality, resistance, signifier"