The Will to Transform: Nation-building and the Strategic State in South Africa

This paper proposes the neologism ‘the will to transform’ to explore the political rationalities of a state-sponsored national reconciliation project—specifically the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (TRC). In this instance, the will to transform refers to the strategic impulse for nation-building that emerges from multiple agencies in society but is codified and directed by ‘the state’. The will to transform not only implies action, it opens up critical questions concerning strategic intentionality and the agency of ‘the state’. As the case explored in this paper shows, the will to transform is not a given but rather an emergent device. In opening up a terrain of analysis centred around the will to transform, the objective of this paper is to disturb the secure conceptual vantage point offered by Foucauldian theorisations of the state by placing state-led projects of nation-building at the heart of the arena of strategic intentionality.