The Demigods

Lacouture's books on Indochina have a deservedly high reputation. This one, though part of it served as a Sorbonne doctoral thesis, displays wide but fragmentary scholarship stitched with speculative generalities. It is an ambitions study of personified, charismatic power, beginning with an abstract discussion, then examining four exemplars: Nasser, Bourgiba of Tunisia, Sihanouk, and Nkrumah. Lacouture tends to use the concept of ""a love affair between people and leader"" in too uncritical and unsubstantiated a way (then is hard put to explain why the people let their heroes fall with such equanimity). The chief-of-state aspect of personal rule is treated with only glancing policy analysis (he is especially vague and kind to Bourgiba in this respect). In discussing Nkrumah, Lacouture slides by his corruption. . . not, one feels, because he holds a brief for Nkrumah, but because it would introduce a realm of seedy political substance well beyond his emphasis on individual magnetism and his claim that ""the noblest motives inspire the majority of these leaders."" While Lacouture makes facile use of terms like ""national bourgeoisie"" and ""small bureaucracy,"" he gives only a hazy picture of these leaders' social bases. His general characterizations of decolonization and neocolonialism are even more problematic. At times he promotes the image of martyred-prisoner national liberators, then in the conclusion pops up with the hypothesis that ""the forces heir to colonialism"" foster ""the cult of the hero"" in order to ""mitigate the class struggle"" which might threaten their influence. Such implicit problems are manifold: but it remains a stimulating contribution to a topic too often treated with Waughian derision or PR boosterism.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.