The Politics of Historical Memory and Commemoration in Africa最新文献

{"title":"Remembering Mzee: The Making and Re-making of “Kenyatta Day,” 1958–2010","authors":"Ed Goodman","doi":"10.1515/9783110655315-005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110655315-005","url":null,"abstract":"While a concern with memory, in particular of the Mau Mau rebellion, has a well-established place in Kenya’s historiography, little attention has yet been paid to the postcolonial Kenyan state’s official memory regime, to what Kenya’s citizens have been asked to remember. The following chapter aims to fill this gap. It traces the origins of “Kenyatta Day,” celebrated from 1964 onwards on 20 October each year, and the four successive stories that were told about it by first its proponents, figures associated with the KANU government and the state, and then its critics in parliament and civil society whose attainment of power led to the re-dedication of the day as “Heroes Day” in 2010, when Kenya’s “Second Republic” was inaugurated by a new constitution. In the early hours of the morning of 20 October 1952, British security services in Kenya set in motion the plan codenamed “Operation Jock Scott,” a strategy devised over the course of the previous few days, with the intention of decapitating the so-called Mau Mau movement.1 The rounding-up of around 150 Kenya African Union (KAU) activists would, it was hoped, leave the movement rudderless, allowing security services the opportunity to regain control in the increasingly fraught circumstances of Kenya’s Central Province and Rift Valley. At the top of the list (and by the time of his arrest, apparently aware of what was coming) was the name of Jomo Kenyatta, leader of the KAU, author of Facing Mount Kenya, and future president of independent Kenya.2 So began the Emergency, which was to last eight long years. The roundup was followed by a show trial of Kenyatta and five other men, Fred Kubai, Bildad Kaggia, Paul Ngei, Kungu Karumba and Achieng’ Oneko, ac For an introduction to successive understandings of Mau Mau, see John Lonsdale, “Foreword,” in Mau Mau from Below, ed. Greet Kershaw (Oxford: James Currey, 1997), xvi–xxx.  On Operation Jock Scott, see David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (London: W.W. Norton, 2005), 62–63. For an introduction to the tense situation in Central Province and the Rift Valley, see Ch.1. See also David Throup, Economic and Social Origins of Mau Mau (London: James Currey, 1987); Daniel Branch, Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya: Counterinsurgency, Civil War, and Decolonisation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); and Gabrielle Lynch, I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), Chs. 1–2. OpenAccess. © 2022 Edward Goodman, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110655315-005 cused by the colonial state of “managing” Mau Mau. Kenyatta, according to Ransley Thacker, a former Kenyan High Court Judge and Attorney-General of Fiji, brought out of retirement to preside over the case, was the “master mind” behind Mau Mau, the man who had “let loose upon this land","PeriodicalId":149530,"journal":{"name":"The Politics of Historical Memory and Commemoration in Africa","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129610753","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Historian as Memory Practitioner","authors":"Ruramisai Charumbira","doi":"10.1515/9783110655315-009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110655315-009","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":149530,"journal":{"name":"The Politics of Historical Memory and Commemoration in Africa","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126490908","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Southern Somalia’s “Glorious Days Are Our Nightmare”: The Performance of Political Memory and Contestations of Commemoration in Northern Somalia (Somaliland)","authors":"Mohamed Haji Ingiriis","doi":"10.1515/9783110655315-006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110655315-006","url":null,"abstract":": This chapter makes a critical intervention into the academic and popular discussions about political memory in Somalia. Focusing on contestations of political memory and disputes over what occurred in the past as well as why, when and where they took place, the chapter foregrounds the importance of memory and commemoration for the Somaliland state-building project. By presenting a new perspective on the making of the breakaway region in northern Somalia that declared itself independent Somaliland in 1991, the chapter offers insights into how memories of trauma function as a political resource that could crystallise conflict and confrontation. Furthermore, in the case observed, judicious deployment of political memory elicited sympathy and solidarity locally and amongst diasporic Somaliland people in the pursuit of the separatist state-building project in Somaliland. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Somaliland at intervals between 2016, 2018 and 2019 that relied on ethnographic observations and interviews with men and women, the chapter explores how the independence project in Somaliland was constructed through accumulated collective historical grievances. These were used to strengthen the case in favour of seeking recognition for a separate state allowing the collapse of the Somali state. Supposedly collective community suffering was rooted in how the military regime – bent on the protection and preservation of specific clans – mistreated the Isaaq, the predominate clan in Somaliland. Building upon previous studies of political memory, the chapter reveals how particularistic historical grievance shaped – and continues to shape – the process of legitimising separatism in Somaliland.","PeriodicalId":149530,"journal":{"name":"The Politics of Historical Memory and Commemoration in Africa","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116272239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Frontmatter","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/9783110655315-fm","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110655315-fm","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":149530,"journal":{"name":"The Politics of Historical Memory and Commemoration in Africa","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125944352","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Public Memorialisation and the Politics of Historical Memory in Africa","authors":"M. Sikes, Cassandra Mark-Thiesen, M. A. Mihatsch","doi":"10.1515/9783110655315-002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110655315-002","url":null,"abstract":"In 2020, a global wave of anti-racism movements contributed to widespread reconsideration of previously honoured people. From Bristol’s slave trader Edward Colston, to confederate generals across the American South, to King Leopold II of Belgium, statues now seen as symbols of white supremacy have fallen.1 Campaigns in Africa challenged state-endorsed memorialisations, thus contributing to the recent groundswell of alternative interpretations of the past. In the Ethiopian town of Harar, Oromo groups toppled a monument to Haile Selassie’s father, Ras Makonnen, seeing both father and son as imperialist oppressors.2 In Cape Town, a statue of white supremacist Cecil Rhodes at Rhodes Memorial on the slopes of Table Mountain was decapitated.3 In 2015, protests over another statue of Rhodes located at the University of Cape Town (UCT) channelled memories of past injustices into widespread mobilisation for change, a movement known as #RhodesMustFall (RMF).4","PeriodicalId":149530,"journal":{"name":"The Politics of Historical Memory and Commemoration in Africa","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123186633","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Figures","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/9783110655315-010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110655315-010","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":149530,"journal":{"name":"The Politics of Historical Memory and Commemoration in Africa","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134269211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Oral history, Closed Settings and the Formation of Narratives: A South African Example","authors":"N. Filippi","doi":"10.1515/9783110655315-003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110655315-003","url":null,"abstract":": Leading interviews in prison, in a post-colonial and post-authoritarian democracy, raises many questions as to the problematic definition of consent, the power dynamics at play and the shortcomings of oral history. Focusing on two South African closed settings, this chapter investigates the extent to which oral history methodology, when completed with the study of other sources such as rumours, silence and the body, can still prove useful. This is especially true when one wishes to analyse the role of violence in the formation of past and present narrative. A brief comparative study of prisons transformed into heritage sites worldwide helps understand the gap between prisoners ’ collective memory and the official memory of post-authoritarian democracies, and how they tend to return prisoners ’ voices to the silenced margins of society. between Oxford ’ study of postcolonial African and","PeriodicalId":149530,"journal":{"name":"The Politics of Historical Memory and Commemoration in Africa","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117085102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A “Quest for Relevance”: The Memory Politics of UNESCO’s General History of Africa","authors":"Casper Andersen","doi":"10.1515/9783110655315-004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110655315-004","url":null,"abstract":"In 1963, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) launched the General History of Africa (GHA) project which ran for over three decades. The stated aim of the project was to produce “a scientific history of African unity and culture from the inside” – a history written by Africans for Africans on the continent and in the diaspora. Those involved in the GHA as contributors, editors and UNESCO officials were motivated by what Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has labelled a “quest for relevance” which was felt strongly among African cultural elites during the decades after 1940. This quest for relevance involved contributing to the decolonisation of the mind based on the idea that the ending of formal colonial rule would be incomplete and meaningless without a cultural decolonisation in education, science, and the arts, including history. In this chapter I revisit the chequered history of the GHA and place the project in its historical context of Pan-Africanism and nation building. I unravel the institutional context and argue that the project was shaped by an agenda centred on the politics of historical memory shared by this generation of Africans and by UNESCO. Africa scholars put more emphasis on showing that Africans had a history than on asking how Africans’ history-making was implicated in establishing or contesting power. (Frederick Cooper, 1994)1 In November 2015, UNESCO – the UN special agency for education, science and culture – celebrated its 70 anniversary with proceedings that included a conference on the organisation’s history.2 During the celebrations, former Director-General and Senegalese geographer and diplomat Amadou Mahtar M′Bow explained what UNESCO had achieved during his Director-Generalship from 1974 to 1983.  Frederick Cooper, “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking African History,” American Historical Review 99, no. 5 (1994): 1528.  Mads K. Mogensen and Ivan. L Christensen, “Report on: Making a Difference: Seventy Years of UNESCO Actions UNESCO Anniversary Conference, UNESCO, Paris, 28–29 October 2015,” UNESDOC Digital Library, 2015, accessed 28 November 2019, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/","PeriodicalId":149530,"journal":{"name":"The Politics of Historical Memory and Commemoration in Africa","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125487587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"List of Contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/9783110655315-011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110655315-011","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":149530,"journal":{"name":"The Politics of Historical Memory and Commemoration in Africa","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121463960","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Memory Process in the Commemorations of the Dead in West African Newspapers","authors":"Rouven Kunstmann, Cassandra Mark-Thiesen","doi":"10.1515/9783110655315-007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110655315-007","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter considers the memory process in the commemorations of the dead in a sample of newspapers from Nigeria and Liberia from the 1940s to 1960s. At its centre are the obituaries and in-memoriams of middleto upperclass citizens published by family members and the state. The chapter homes in on how a number of journalistic processes, from “signalling” to “masking” to “controlling,” were used to capture specific elements of the past and, more significantly, to guide the present and future self-fashioning of the African elite. As a fitting part of this Gedenkschrift, itself a technology of death culture, this chapter explores practices surrounding death as performed in West African newspapers of the 1940s to 1960s. We examine the printing of death notices and obituaries both as a historically dynamic process and as one of multiple interrelated modes of (both textual and non-textual) social communication and memory-making in Africa. With its emergence in the nineteenth century, the West African press has been at the forefront of forming and reinforcing identities, helping both individuals and institutions to present themselves to a wider audience. In recent times, studies of the practices of self-fashioning in print culture have attracted much attention in Africanist historiography and beyond.1 This chapter explores the social and political signalling accompanying announcements of death in newspapers. Herein we compare two forms of publicising death, namely in-memoriams and obituaries. In line with Jan-Georg Deutsch’s interest in the study of social relations in shaping history, we demonstrate the commemoration expressed in these West African advertisements of death as promoting the solidification of sociopolitical relationships. For the purpose of this examination of print media, we draw evidence from Nigerian and Liberian newspapers. After the Second World War, both states en Derek R. Peterson, Emma Hunter, and Stephanie Newell, eds., African Print Cultures: Newspapers and Their Publics in the Twentieth Century (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2016); Mamadou Diawara, Bernard C. Lategan, and Jörn Rüsen, eds., Historical Memory in Africa: Dealing with the Past, Reaching for the Future in an Intercultural Context (New York: Berghahn","PeriodicalId":149530,"journal":{"name":"The Politics of Historical Memory and Commemoration in Africa","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133165818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}