Panel 43: Contested Truths in Africa: Facing Power, Transitional Justice, and Memory Politics
Panel organisers: Tobias Hagmann (Univ. of California, USA) and Markus Hoehne (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany)
Contact: tobias.hagmann@geo.uzh.ch
| This panel sheds light on contemporary processes of ‘truth-making’ in sub-Saharan Africa in the wake of ,e.g., wars, civil wars, human rights violations, political repression, revolutions, and election fraud. These events and phenomena usually involve strong political contestation within but also outside of the communities concerned. The panel provides an opportunity for discussing conflicting interpretations of the political past and present at the crossroads between different ‘truths’, contained in dominant narratives (backed by majorities or the state) and counter-narratives (of individuals or minority groups), various forms of memory politics, and external/international (but certainly not neutral) approaches such as transitional justice. Strategies of producing, appropriating and contesting dominant and/or subaltern interpretations of current political trajectories are of particular academic and policy concern. We invite empirically informed and ethnographic papers that scrutinize how governments, communities, individuals and external observers including researchers interact in the pursuit of ‘truth’ in contested political settings. Topics of interest are divergent conceptions of justice after violent conflict; competing memories of traumatic events; state backed narratives of the past and contestations of these narratives; local, national and international involvements in producing ‘truths’ and ‘facts’; interactions between researchers, state powers and communities over the interpretation of contested events; the role of international agendas and actors concerning the (un-)covering of politically charged ‘facts’ and ‘truths’ in sub-Saharan Africa. |