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Dance, Discipline, and the Liberal Self at a Ugandan Catholic Boarding School

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2016

David G. Pier
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Abstract:

In the last years of Idi Amin’s reign, modern dance was introduced at Namasagali College, a Catholic boarding school in rural Uganda, as a means of encouraging modern, liberal self-awareness in students. Drawing on interviews with Namasagali’s former headmaster, teachers, and students, this article offers the first scholarly consideration of this important school, and contextualizes its modern dance curriculum within Africa’s historical modernity/modernization problematic. The school’s progressive educational program, with its focus on creative exploration and ownership of the body, was framed within a neocolonial regimen of discipline and punishment that aimed to drill modern behavior into students. In its clashing modes of government, this school exhibited contradictions that have perennially troubled Western liberal intervention in Africa.

Résumé:

Durant les dernières années du règne d’IDI, la danse moderne a été introduite au College Namasagali, un internat missionnaire dans une zone rurale en Ouganda, comme moyen d’encourager chez les élèves une conscience de soi moderne et libéral. Cet article met en contexte cet événement au sein d’une plus grande, historique moderniste/modernisation, problématique en Afrique. Le programme d’enseignement progressif de l’école, qui met l’accent sur l’exploration créatrice et la maitrise du corps, était encadré par un régime néocolonial de discipline et de répression visant à établir par force un comportement moderne aux étudiants. Au cœur des ces conflits nés d’un différent de gouvernance, cette école expose les contradictions qui ont troublé perpétuellement l’intervention occidentale libérale en Afrique.

Keywords

DanceUgandamodernismCatholicboarding schoolNamasagaliGrimesperformanceeducationliberalism
Type
ARTICLES
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , December 2016 , pp. 33 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2016 

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