Sovereignty from ‘ground zero’: Power through performance in independent South Sudan

Abstract

Through a reading of the South Sudanese independence ceremony as a ritual of statehood, I show how state actors in South Sudan declared and performed their claim to sovereignty in the face of extraordinary challenge. Central to their performance was their rendering of a national chronotope and their assertion of what I call rebel sovereignty: their articulation of themselves as both saviours from oppression and legitimate wielders of state power. State actors' equal appeal to local antipathy to centralised power and international norms of statehood, as well as their performative redefinition of international undermining as partnership, demonstrates the necessity of contemporary sovereign performance to define both the content and context of extant political realities. More broadly, the ritual demonstrates the performative basis of sovereignty and the increasing necessity of sovereign aspirants to acknowledge the impossibility of sovereign control and redefine challenges and critiques of this power as they assert it.