Paradoxes of history and memory in postcolonial Sierra Leone / edited by Sylvia Ojukutu-Macauley and Ismail Rashid.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Ojukutu-Macauley, Sylvia.

Rashid, Ismail O. D., 1963-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Historiography.

Postcolonialism.

Collective memory.

History.

Sierra Leone--History--21st century.

Sierra Leone.

Sierra Leone--History--20th century.

Collective memory--Sierra Leone.

Postcolonialism--Sierra Leone.

Historiography--Sierra Leone.

Physical Description:

323 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Maryland : Lexington Books, [2013]

Summary:

This book reflects on the complex processes in the production of historical knowledge and memory of Sierra Leone and its Diaspora since the 1960s.The processes, while emblematic of experiences in other parts of Africa, contain their own distinctive features. The fragments of these memories are etched in the psyches, bodies, and practices of Africans in Africa and other global landscapes; however, they are also embedded in the various discourses and historical narratives about the continent and its peoples. Even though Africans have reframed these discourses and narratives to reclaim and re-center their own worldviews, agencies and experiences, since independence they remained-until recently-heavily sedimented within Western colonialist and racialist ideas and frameworks. This anthology engages and interrogates the varying frameworks that have informed the different practices-professional as well as popular-of retelling the Sierra Leonean past. In a sense, therefore, this book is concerned with the familiar outline of the story about the making and unmaking of an African "nation" and its constituent race, ethnicity, class, and cultural fragments from colonialism to the present. Yet Sierra Leone-the quintessential British colony, the oldest and most Pan-African country on the continent-provides interesting twists to this familiar outline. The contributors to this volume, representing different generations of very accomplished and prominent scholars of Sierra Leone in Africa, the United States, and Europe, provide their own distinctive reflections on these twists based on their research interests, which cover ethnicity, class, gender, identity formation, nation building, resistance, and social conflict. Their contributions engage various paradoxes and transformative moments in Sierra Leone and West African history. They also reflect the changing modes of historical practice and perspectives over the last fifty years of independence. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction / Sylvia Ojukutu-Macauley and Ismail Rashid

Rebellious subjects and citizens : writing subalterns into the history of Sierra Leone / Ismail Rashid

Clapping with one hand : the search for a gendered "province of freedom" in the historiography of Sierra Leone / Sylvia Ojukutu-Macauley

(re) envisioning the African diaspora : historical memory and cross-fertilization in post-colonial Sierra Leone / Nemata Blyden

Historical memory, Pan-Africanism and national identity / Tamba M'bayo

The Chalmers Commission and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Sierra Leone : official inquiries as historical memory / Lansana Gberie

Decolonization and the rise of Krio separatism / Gibril Cole

The roots of military praetorianism in Sierra Leone / Festus Cole

History and memory in contemporary Sierra Leone : re-inscribing fragments from an Atlantic past / Ibrahim Abdullah

History, memory and post-colonial Sierra Leone / Arthur Abraham

Sierra Leone at fifty : confronting old problems and preparing for new challenges / Yusuf Bangura

They hold up half the sky : prospects and challenges for Sierra Leonean women in the 21st century and beyond / Sylvia Ojukutu-Macauley.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780739180020

0739180029

OCLC:

851417777