Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T09:20:12.216Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Southern Sudanese Narratives of Displacement, and the Ambiguity of “Voice”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2015

Nicki Kindersley
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Refugee life stories have developed as a popular medium for attempting to portray southern Sudanese wartime experience. These narratives of war and exile have been told, edited and published in what has become an explanatory industry in refugee work worldwide. The development of this economy of life stories from the early 1980s, however, has encouraged the propagation of standardized displaced “life stories” as a discrete narrative genre. This article traces the formulation of this distinctive style of historical explanation and argues that this genre, while claiming emancipatory agency and “voice” for marginalized people, has instead become a narrative trap.

Résumé

Les récits de vie de refugiés se sont développés comme un moyen populaire pour raconter l’expérience du sud Soudan en tant de guerre. Ces histoires de guerre et d’exil ont été dites, modifiées et publiées devenant ainsi une véritable industrie pour le travail d’explication des refugiés à travers le monde. Le développement de cette économie de récits depuis le début des années 1980, a cependant encouragé la propagation et standardisation de “récits de vie” de populations déplacées en créant un genre littéraire à part entière. Cet article retrace l’histoire de la formulation de ce style distinct d’explication historique et suggère que ce genre littéraire, malgré sa prétention à donner un pouvoir et une “parole” émancipateurs à ses auteurs marginalisés, est devenu en fait un piège narratif.

Type
Critical Historiography
Information
History in Africa , Volume 42 , June 2015 , pp. 203 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abiar, Makur, and Fenelon, Guy-Luce, King Deng, The Original Lost Boy of Sudan (Suwanee GA: Faith Books and More, 2010).Google Scholar
Abusharaf, Rogaia Mustafa, Transforming Displaced Women in Sudan: Politics and the Body in a Squatter Settlement (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adol Mawien, Mator, Survival of the Fittest and How the Lost Boy Survived It All (Bloomington IN: WestBow Press, 2012).Google Scholar
Akol Makeer, Joseph, From Africa to America: The Journey of a Lost Boy of Sudan (Mustang OA: Tate Publishing, 2008).Google Scholar
Allen, Tim, “Repatriation to Northern Uganda: A View from Below” (paper presented at UNRISD Symposium on social and economic aspects of mass voluntary return of refugees from one African country to another, Harare, 12–14 March 1991).Google Scholar
Badri, Amna E., and Abdel Sadig, Intisar I., Sudan: Between Peace and War: Internally Displaced Women in Khartoum and South and West Kordofan (Nairobi, UNIFEM, 1998).Google Scholar
Barillas, Martin, “Passover for Sudan’s Slaves,” Spero News and American Anti-Slavery Group, 26 April 2011, http://www.speroforum.com/a/52848/Rabbi-Polak-of-Boston-recalls-Passover-story-for-freed-Sudanese-slaves (accessed on 27 April 2011).Google Scholar
Bascom, Johnathan, “Reconstituting Households and Reconstructing Home Areas: The Case of Returning Eritreans,” in: Allen, Tim (ed.), In Search of Cool Ground: War, Flight and Homecoming in Northeast Africa (London: James Currey, 1996), 66–79.Google Scholar
Bascom, Johnathan, Losing Place: Refugee Populations and Rural Transformations in East Africa (Oxford: Berghan Books, 1998).Google Scholar
Bernasconi, Oriana, “Negotiating Personal Experiences over the Lifetime: Narrative Elasticity as an Analytic Tool,” Symbolic Interaction 34–1 (2011), 20–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boswell, Alan, “As Sudan Prepares to Split, Many Still Stranded Far from Home,” McClatchy Newspapers, 28 April 2011, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/26/112834/as-sudan-prepares-to-split-many.html (accessed 1 May 2011).Google Scholar
Briggs, Charles L., “Mediating Infanticide: Theorizing Relations between Narrative and Violence,” Cultural Anthropology 22–3 (2007), 315–356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Dayna, and Mansfield, Kathryn, “Listening to the Experiences of the Long-Term Displaced,” Forced Migration Review 33 (2009), 15–17.Google Scholar
Brun, Catherine, “Reterritorializing the Relationship between People and Place in Refugee Studies,” Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography 83–1 (2001), 15–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bul Dau, John, Lost Boy, Lost Girl: Escaping Civil War in Sudan (Des Moines IA: National Geographic Books, 2010).Google Scholar
Burlingame, Jeff, The Lost Boys of Sudan (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Benchmark, 2011).Google Scholar
Butler, Judith, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York/London: Routledge, 1997).Google Scholar
Bützer, Christina, The Long Way Home: Contemplations of Southern Sudanese Refugees in Uganda (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2007).Google Scholar
Chamberlain, Mary, “Gender and the Narratives of Migration,” History Workshop Journal 43 (1997), 86–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chamberlain, Mary, Narratives of Exile and Return (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2001).Google Scholar
Coker, Elizabeth M., “‘Travelling Pains:’ Embodied Metaphors of Suffering among Southern Sudanese Refugees in Cairo,” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 28 (2004), 15–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Conrad, Bettina, “Out of the ‘Memory Hole:’ Alternative Narratives of the Eritrean Revolution in the Diaspora,” Africa Spectrum 41–2 (2006), 249–271.Google Scholar
Dumtra, Jeff, Follow the Women and the Cows: Sudan: Personal Stories of Sudan’s Uprooted People (Washington DC: US Committee for Refugees, 1999).Google Scholar
Eggers, Dave, and Deng, Valentino Achak, “Foreword: The Amplification of Seldom-Heard Voices,” in: Waltzer, Craig (ed.), Out of Exile: Narratives from the Abducted and Displaced People of Sudan (New York: McSweeney’s Books, 2009), 1–3.Google Scholar
Eltahawy, Nora, Comer, Brooke and Elshimi, Amani, “Introduction,” in: Eltahawy, Nora, Comer, Brooke and Elshimi, Amani (eds.), Voices in Refuge: Stories from Sudanese Refugees in Cairo (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2009) 1–4.Google Scholar
Eltahawy, Nora, Comer, Brooke and Elshimi, Amani, (eds.), Voices in Refuge: Stories from Sudanese Refugees in Cairo (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2009).Google Scholar
Fassin, Didier, “The Humanitarian Politics of Testimony: Subjectification through Trauma in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Cultural Anthropology 23–3 (2008), 531–558.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
French, Brigittine M., “The Semiotics of Collective Memories,” Annual Review of Anthropology 41–1 (2012), 337–353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frisch, Michael, A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (New York: Suny Press, 1990).Google Scholar
Grele, Ronald J., “Movement Without Aim: Methodological and Theoretical Problems in Oral History,” in: Perks, Robert and Thomson, Alistair (eds.), The Oral History Reader (London: Routledge, 1998), 38–52.Google Scholar
Gonda, Sam, and Mogga, William, “Loss of the Revered Cattle,” in: Twose, Nigel and Pogrund, Benjamin (eds.), War Wounds: Development Costs of Conflict in Southern Sudan: Sudanese People Report on Their War (London: Panos Institute, 1988), 63–82.Google Scholar
Hammond, Laura, This Place Will Become Home: Refugee Repatriation to Ethiopia (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrell-Bond, Barbara, “Foreword,” in: Eltahawy, Nora, Comer, Brooke and Elshimi, Amani (eds.), Voices in Refuge: Stories from Sudanese Refugees in Cairo (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2009) xi–xvi.Google Scholar
Hodgkin, Katharine, and Radstone, Susannah, “Introduction: Contested Pasts,” in: Hodgkin, Katharine and Radstone, Susannah (eds.), Contested Pasts: The Politics of Memory (Oxford: Routledge, 2003), 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodgkin, Katharine, and Radstone, Susannah, “Part II: Remembering Suffering: Trauma and History,” in: Hodgkin, Katharine and Radstone, Susannah (eds.), Contested Pasts: The Politics of Memory (Oxford: Routledge, 2003), 97–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howe, Marvine, “Sudanese Refugees Return with Hope of Peace,” New York Times, 29 December 1970.Google Scholar
Impey, Angela, “The Poetics of Transitional Justice in Dinka Songs in South Sudan,” UNISCI Discussion Papers 33 (2014), 57–77.Google Scholar
Jackson, Cecile, “Speech, Gender and Power: Beyond Testimony,” Development and Change 43–5 (2012), 999–1023.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, Wendy, “Uduk Resettlement: Dreams and Realities,” in: Allen, Tim (ed.), In Search of Cool Ground: War, Flight and Homecoming in Northeast Africa (London: James Currey, 1996), 182–202.Google Scholar
Johnson, Douglas H., “Increasing the Trauma of Return: An Assessment of the UN’s Emergency Response to the Evacuation of the Sudanese Refugee Camps in Ethiopia, 1991,” in: Allen, Tim (ed.), In Search of Cool Ground: War, Flight and Homecoming in Northeast Africa (London: James Currey, 1996), 171–181.Google Scholar
Johnson, Douglas H., The Root Cases of Sudan’s Civil Wars (London: James Currey, 2011).Google Scholar
Keesing, Roger M., “Kwaio Women Speak: The Micropolitics of Autobiography in a Solomon Island Society,” American Anthropologist 87–1 (1985), 27–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kibreab, Gaim, Ready and Willing... But Still Waiting: Eritrean Refugees in Sudan and the Dilemmas of Return (Uppsala: Life & Peace Institute, 1996).Google Scholar
Kratz, Corinne A., “Conversations and Lives,” in: White, Luise, Miescher, Stephan and Cohen, David W. (eds.), African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2001), 127–161.Google Scholar
Lado Jada, Marcello, “The Four Enemies,” in: Twose, Nigel and Pogrund, Benjamin (eds.), War Wounds: Development Costs of Conflict in Southern Sudan: Sudanese People Report on Their War (London: Panos Institute, 1988), 125–138.Google Scholar
Logune Taban, Alfred, “The Spreading Crisis,” in: Twose, Nigel and Pogrund, Benjamin (eds.), War Wounds: Development Costs of Conflict in Southern Sudan: Sudanese People Report on Their War (London: Panos Institute, 1988), 143–157.Google Scholar
Lomong, Lopez, Running for My Life: One Lost Boy’s Journey from the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Inc, 2012).Google Scholar
Malkki, Liisa H., “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees,” Cultural Anthropology 7–1 (1992), 24–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malkki, Liisa H., “Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization,” Cultural Anthropology 11–3 (1996), 377–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manyang, Agok, The Phoenix of South Sudan: A Lost Boy’s Journey to a New World (Bloomington IN: iUniverse, 2012).Google Scholar
Marier, Majok, and Ford-Williamson, Estelle, Seed of South Sudan: Memoir of a “Lost Boy” Refugee (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2014).Google Scholar
Mohr, Charles, “Poverty Threatens the New Peace,” New York Times, 22 April 1974.Google Scholar
Mosely Lesch, Ann, The Sudan – Contested National Identities (Bloomington IN/Oxford: Indiana University Press/James Currey, 1998).Google Scholar
Nhial, Abraham, and Mills, DiAnn, Lost Boy No More: A True Story of Survival and Salvation (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2004).Google Scholar
Nillson, Desirée, Internally Displaced, Refugees and Returnees from and in the Sudan: A Review (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2000).Google Scholar
Obasanjo, Olusegun, “Preface,” in: Twose, Nigel and Pogrund, Benjamin (eds.), War Wounds: Development Costs of Conflict in Southern Sudan: Sudanese People Report on Their War (London: Panos Institute, 1988), 1–3.Google Scholar
Ottaway, David B., and Asmare, Taene, “Civil War Breaks Out in Sudan, Refugees Say,” Washington Post, 29 July 1975.Google Scholar
Parker, Melissa, “Social Devastation and Mental Health in Northeast Africa: Some Reflections on an Absent Literature,” in: Allen, Tim (ed.), In Search of Cool Ground: War, Flight and Homecoming in Northeast Africa (London: James Currey, 1996), 262–272.Google Scholar
Rädda Barnen Report, “The Unaccompanied Minors of Southern Sudan,” November 1994, accessible through Forced Migration Online, http://repository.forcedmigration.org/show_metadata.jsp?pid=fmo:3203.Google Scholar
Ranger, Terence O., “Personal Reminiscence and the Experience of the People in East Central Africa,” Oral History 6–1 (1978), 45–78.Google Scholar
Ranger, Terence O., “Concluding Reflections on Cross-Mandates,” in: Allen, Tim (ed.), In Search of Cool Ground: War, Flight and Homecoming in Northeast Africa (London: James Currey, 1996), 318–328.Google Scholar
Rappeport, Wendy, “Uganda Shows It Cares – Refugee Voices from Exile,” UNHCR Refugees Magazine 107, 1 March 1997, accessible throughhttp://www.unhcr.org/3b66cf084.html.Google Scholar
Reid, Richard, “War and Remembrance: Orality, Literacy and Conflict in the Horn,” Journal of African Cultural Studies 18–1 (2006), 89–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogge, John, Relocation and Repatriation of Displaced Persons in Sudan: A Report to the Minister of Relief and Displaced Persons Affairs (Khartoum: Government of Sudan/UNDP, 1990).Google Scholar
Roper, Michael, “Analysing the Analysed: Transference and Counter-Transference in the Oral History Encounter,” Oral History 31–2 (2003), 20–32.Google Scholar
Rosh White, Naomi, “Marking Absences: Holocaust Testimony and History,” in: Perks, Robert and Thomson, Alistair (eds.), The Oral History Reader (London: Routledge, 1998), 172–181.Google Scholar
Salih, M.A. Mohamed, “Responding to Situations of Mass Voluntary Return: Past Experience in Sudan,” in: Allen, Tim (ed.), In Search of Cool Ground: War, Flight and Homecoming in Northeast Africa (London: James Currey, 1996), 164–170.Google Scholar
Sikainga, Ahmad Alawad, Slaves into Workers: Emancipation and Labor in Colonial Sudan (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996).Google Scholar
Tanner, Henry, “Town Where Sudan Uprising Began is Now a Way Station for Refugees,” New York Times, 9 December 1972.Google Scholar
Tinker, Jon, “Introduction: The Floods and the War,” in: Twose, Nigel and Pogrund, Benjamin (eds.), War Wounds: Development Costs of Conflict in Southern Sudan: Sudanese People Report on Their War (London: Panos Institute, 1988), i—iii.Google Scholar
Tonkin, Elizabeth, Narrating Our Pasts: The Social Construction of Oral History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turton, David, “Migrants and Refugees: a Mursi Case Study,” in: Allen, Tim (ed.), In Search of Cool Ground: War, Flight and Homecoming in Northeast Africa (London: James Currey, 1996), 96–110.Google Scholar
Twose, Nigel, and Pogrund, Benjamin (eds.), War Wounds: Development Costs of Conflict in Southern Sudan: Sudanese People Report on Their War (London: Panos Institute, 1988).Google Scholar
Vaughan, Megan, “Reported Speech and Other Kinds of Testimony,” in: White, Luise, Miescher, Stephan and Cohen, David W. (eds), African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2001), 53–77.Google Scholar
Waltzer, Craig (ed.), Out of Exile: Narratives from the Abducted and Displaced People of Sudan (New York: McSweeney’s Books, 2009).Google Scholar
Werbner, Richard, “Introduction: Beyond Oblivion: Confronting Memory Crisis,” in: Werbner, Richard (ed.), Memory and the Postcolony: African Anthropology and the Critique of Power (London: Zed Books, 1998), 1–17.Google Scholar
White, Luise, Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (London: University of California Press, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, Luise, Miescher, Stephan and Cohen, David W., “Introduction,” in: White, Luise, Miescher, Stephan and Cohen, David W. (eds.), African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2001), 1–27.Google Scholar
White, Luise, Miescher, Stephan and Cohen, David W. (eds.), African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Wooldridge, Mike, “Why They Fled,” in: Twose, Nigel and Pogrund, Benjamin (eds.), War Wounds: Development Costs of Conflict in Southern Sudan: Sudanese People Report on Their War (London: Panos Institute, 1988), 139–142.Google Scholar
Zetter, Roger, “More Labels, Fewer Refugees: Remaking the Refugee Label in an Era of Globalisation,” Journal of Refugee Studies 20–2 (2007) 172–192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar