Abstract

The reflections we present in this article are a fundamental philosophical contribution to African politics and governance. We propose a political thought, based on the imaginary power of the African peoples, coupled with the principles of modern power from Western Europe; and analyzed sovereignty, both national and popular, based on speech or oral expression. We thus suggest an ethics of the constitution, based on the principle of the respect for the given word. Our relation to a constitutional text is listening to the unspoken, which signals in the singular of every article of the constitution, capable of signifying more than it says. In relation to the text which concretizes the condition of the human being, a being-speaking, listens by saying words as if they were read in his own condition. The modality of the constitutional text is a letter before the narration, a letter which collects the word of being together in text, and which thus lays the sovereignty of the word in the trace of its path. The letter, which as such, contains what, overflows it, because the words it express, point to another meaning, as a human signature.

Key words: Sovereignty, imaginary, political power, orality, constitution.