Proximate Thuggery

Abstract

In this paper, I rethink thuggery, an overt form of dissent, as a spatial structural frame. Through a close reading of everyday forms of thuggery in Nigeria, exemplified in literary, musical, and photographic forms, I argue that not only is thuggery ubiquitous in the African postcolony but also that it is the means by which the citizenry assert their citizenship, structure their space, and perform democracy. I use the phrase “proximate thuggery” in two ways: first, to broaden the commonplace definition of thuggery as violent antisocial behavior which does not hold up in many postcolonial states where there seems no line separating the violent from the non-violent, where the insidiously violent masquerades as non-violent; and second, to signal the quotidian nature of dissent and therefore refocus attention on those manifestations of thuggery even in corridors of power. If the purpose of critical cultural studies is to understand a problem from its roots in order to suggest useful solutions, it seems fitting to pay attention to everyday, non-spectacular forms of dissent—for, among other reasons, attention to overt forms of dissent isolates them as anomalies and leads to inadequate solutions.