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Memory and the postcolony : African anthropology and the critique of power / edited by Richard Werbner.
Penn Museum Library GN645 .M47 1998
By Request
- Format:
- Book
- Series:
- Postcolonial encounters
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Anthropology--Africa--Philosophy.
- Anthropology.
- Memory.
- Social psychology--Africa.
- Social psychology.
- Power (Social sciences)--Africa.
- Power (Social sciences).
- Philosophy.
- Africa--Social life and customs.
- Africa.
- Manners and customs.
- Africa--Politics and government.
- Politics and government.
- Physical Description:
- x, 236 pages : illustrations, map ; 22 cm.
- Place of Publication:
- London ; New York : Zed Books ; New York, NY : Distributed in the USA exclusively by St. Martin's Press, 1998.
- Summary:
- The critique of power in contemporary Africa calls for a new approach to the making of political subjectivities. Through theoretically informed anthropology, this book meets the urgent need to rethink our understanding of the moral and political force of memory, its official and unofficial forms, its moves between the personal and the social in postcolonial transformations. "Memory and the Postcolony" brings these transformations into perspective. It is divided into three sections in which distinguished anthropologists explore death and subjectivity; the memory work of elections and public commissions; and fundamentalism and the future.
- Contents:
- Introduction: Beyond Oblivion: Confronting Memory Crisis / Richard Werbner 1
- The Dead, Unsettled Memory and State Collapse 3
- Popular and State Memorialism in Nation-Building 7
- Memory Suppression, Failure and Democracy 9
- Remembering the Present in the Struggle for Human Rights 10
- Fundamentalist Memory Work: Counter-Movements, Modernity and the Future 11
- The Location of Memory in Postcolonial Studies 15
- Part 1 In Memory: Death and Subjectivity
- Chapter 1 Beyond the Grave: History, Memory and Death in Postcolonial Congo/Zaire / Filip De Boeck 21
- Tradition and/or Modernity: A Catch-22 26
- History, Memory and Nostalgia in Congo 30
- Nostalgia, Breach and the `Hermit's Choice' 33
- The Disruption of Memory `Texts' 39
- `This Body is in Danger' 45
- Beyond the Grave: The Zombification of Postcolonial Reality 49
- Chapter 2 Death, Memory and the Politics of Legitimation: Nuer Experiences of the Continuing Second Sudanese Civil War / Sharon Elaine Hutchinson 58
- Chains of Memory Binding Nuer Families: Achieving Procreative Immortality 60
- Disengaging God from Death: The Pollution of Homicide 63
- Regional Variations in People's Experience of Gun Warfare: The Western Nuer 64
- Regional Variations in People's Experience of Gun Warfare: The Eastern Nuer 67
- Chapter 3 Smoke from the Barrel of a Gun: Postwars of the Dead, Memory and Reinscription in Zimbabwe / Richard Werbner 71
- The Postcolonial Shift from the Modern Memorials of the Nation-State 71
- Anti-Memory and Immediate Memory 73
- The Plurality of Political Origin Myths 75
- Smoke from the Barrel of the Anti-Colonial Gun 76
- The Moment of Triumphalism 77
- Tribute, State Memorialism and Inscription on the Landscape 78
- Remaking the Inner Circle: From State Terror to the Farmers' Union 79
- Heroes Acre and Postcolonial Pastiche 82
- Fixed Ceremonial, Tensions and the Fragility of Commemoration 86
- The Personal, the National and the Moral High Ground 88
- Tensions within the Ruling Party 89
- The Popular Commemoration of the Opposition 91
- Quasi-Nationalism 92
- Communal Commemoration, Inscription and Victims of Terror 97
- The Cosmic Trace of Bloodshed 98
- Part 2 Towards Memory: Elections, Trials and Commissions
- Chapter 4 The Uses of Defeat: Memory and Political Morality in East Madagascar / Jennifer Cole 105
- Historical Background: The Ambiguities of Double Colonisation 108
- The Elections of 1993 and the Uses of Memory 109
- Notions of Governance: Attitudes towards the State 112
- Politics: Trickery and Chaos 116
- A Rupture of Memory and the Forces Vives 120
- The Uses of Defeat 121
- Chapter 5 Systematic Judicial and Extra-Judicial Injustice: Preparations for Future Accountability / Sally Falk Moore 126
- Nigeria and the Saro-Wiwa Case 134
- The S.M. Otieno Case 137
- Part 3 Against Memory: Fundamentalism and the Future
- Chapter 6 Pentecostalism, Cultural Memory and the State: Contested Representations of Time in Postcolonial Malawi / Rijk van Dijk 155
- Beyond Colonial Nostalgia: Southern African Religious Movements as Mnemonics 159
- An Emerging Counter-Movement: Born-Again Conversion, `Sealing Off' and Instant Memory 161
- Immediacy and Anti-Nostalgia: Rejecting Elders' Empowerment and Mnemonics 163
- Forgetting for the Future, Strangerhood and Boundary-Crossing 166
- Postcolonial Power, State Cultural Nostalgia and the Nkhoswe 169
- State-Backed Gerontocracy, Surveillance and Defiant Youth 172
- Interpretation and Conclusion 174
- Chapter 7 `Make a Complete Break with the Past': Memory and Postcolonial Modernity in Ghanaian Pentecostal Discourse / Birgit Meyer 182
- Pentecostalism in Ghana: War against Satan 184
- Deliverance and the Urge to Become New 187
- Tracing `the Past' 193
- The Presence of Occult Forces in People's Lives 195
- The Deliverance Ritual 200
- Pentecostalism, Memory and Modernity 201
- Chapter 8 Memory and Becoming Chosen Other: Fundamentalist Elite-Making in a Zambian Catholic Mission School / Anthony Simpson 209
- The Fellowships of Seventh-Day Adventists and Born-Agains 210
- Casting Out Spirits of Illness 217
- Negation, `Half-London' and Ambivalence 217
- Memory Narratives of the Individuated Self 221
- The Cost of Discipleship 223.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- ISBN:
- 1856495914
- 1856495922
- OCLC:
- 39157418
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