Fateful Futures in the Presence of the Past: Epochalist Hopes at South Sudan’s Independence

2019 ◽  
pp. 68-85
Author(s):  
Timm Sureau
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Initial Moment ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Strong Relation

Hope, understood as a “temporal reorientation of knowledge” (Miyazaki 2004, 5), enacts and changes the future as a precipitate of interaction (Crapanzano 2003, 6). During South Sudan’s independence, an epochalist hope was directed towards an end of the miseries associated with Sudanese rule and government officials of the new state tried to inscribe this hope into symbols. Their idea was to create a strong relation between those symbols of hope and a new national identity, in order to bridge the epochalist anticlimax that necessarily followed the initial moment of independence. Via the examination of two examples of hope from South Sudan, and through scrutiny of the symbols of the flag and the anthem, I describe that hope in the future of South Sudan as it existed in 2011, the symbols and the nation building attempts. I conclude by returning to Frantz Fanon’s warnings against European models and an analysis of how those who follow them fall in the old trap of nationalism, an identity construction that necessarily includes and excludes. In the case of South Sudan this collapsed the country back into an old nightmare of ethnic factionalism, long-standing forms of exploitation with new beneficiaries, and new, violent, forms and acts of exclusion.

And Then There Were Two: What Is “Sudan” Now?

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sondra Hale
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Central Government ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Truncated Form ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Moment

How can scholars of Sudan now write about the landmass still called “Sudan”? What do we mean when we use the word? How can the name, which denotes a whole, encompass the fragments that make up its official boundaries? For the last several years, events in Sudan have been changing more rapidly than we Sudanists can analyze them or than Sudanese themselves can process them. Now, in its truncated form, delineating national identity—always problematic in the past—becomes far more complex. Considering extant cultural flows of art, language, customs, and religion, the dividing lines are, at best, dubious. A number of events are transpiring at the moment of writing this brief essay that have changed and will continue to change the future of not just one country but now two. For example, nothing is resolved in Darfur (in western Sudan), with peace talks stalled, more violence being perpetrated by the northern central government and its proxies, guerilla groups proliferating and battling among themselves, and a probable link among some Darfur groups and South Sudan forces.

scholarly journals Simono Daukanto BUDĄ Senowęs-Letuwiu Kalnienu ĩr Ƶamajtiu (1845) šaltiniai

2020 ◽  
pp. 217-248
Author(s):  
Roma Bončkutė
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Comparative Linguistics ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Regional Historiography

SOURCES OF SIMONAS DAUKANTAS’S BUDĄ SENOWĘS-LËTUWIÛ KALNIENÛ ĨR ƵÁMAJTIÛ (1845) The article investigates Simonas Daukantas’s (1793–1864) BUDĄ Senowęs-Lëtuwiû Kalnienû ĩr Ƶámajtiû (The Character of the Lithuanian Highlanders and Samogitians of the Old Times, 1845; hereafter Bd) with regards to genre, origin of the title, and the dominant German sources of the work. It claims that Daukantas conceived Bd because he understood that the future of Lithuania is closely related to its past. A single, united version of Lithuanian history, accepted by the whole nation, was necessary for the development of Lithuanian national identity and collective feeling. The history, which up until then had not been published in Lithuanian, could have helped to create the contours of a new society by presenting the paradigmatic events of the past. The collective awareness of the difference between the present and the past (and future) should have given the Lithuanian community an incentive to move forward. Daukantas wrote Bd quickly, between 1842 and May 28, 1844, because he drew on his previous work ISTORYJE ƵEMAYTYSZKA (History of the Lithuanian Lowlands, ~1831–1834; IƵ). Based on the findings of previous researchers of Daukantas’s works, after studying the dominant sources of Bd and examining their nature, this article comes to the conclusion that the work has features of both cultural history and regional historiography. The graphically highlighted form of the word “BUDĄ” used in the work’s title should be considered the author’s code. Daukantas, influenced by the newest culturological research and comparative linguistics of the 18th–19th centuries, propagated that Lithuanians originate from India and, like many others, found evidence of this in the Lithuanian language and culture. He considered the Budini (Greek Βουδίνοι), who are associated with the followers of Buddha, to be Lithuanian ancestors. He found proof of this claim in the language and chose the word “būdas” (character), which evokes aforementioned associations, to express the idea of the work.

‘Een homo is minder verdacht dan een held’ : Literaire verbeeldingen van Michiel de Ruyter en het nationale-identiteitsdebat na 2001

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-194
Author(s):  
Marc van Zoggel
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
National History ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range

Abstract Historically, the glorification of the past and the eulogizing of national heroes in art and literature have been constructive elements in the process of nation building. In the postmodern era, however, a cultivation of national history and its great men and women is often regarded outdated or even suspect and regressive. The ‘nine eleven’ terrorist attacks in the United States and the rise and assassination of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn intensified an ongoing debate in the Netherlands about the meaning and value of a shared ‘Dutch national identity’ in a multicultural, diversified society. In this article, I argue that several novels and poems about Dutch naval hero Michiel de Ruyter (1607-1676), published in or in the wake of the ‘De Ruyter year 2007’, both reproduce and challenge a wide range of voices, viewpoints and sentiments within the hot topic of national identity in the twenty-first century.

Speeding Towards the Future through the Past: Landscape, Movement and National Identity

2014 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnar Árnason ◽  
Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson ◽  
Tinna Grétarsdóttir ◽  
Kristinn Schram ◽  
Katla Kjartansdóttir
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future

Mai Masri: Mothering Film-makers in Palestinian Revolutionary Cinema

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie Van de Peer
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Women Filmmakers ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Children’S Perspectives ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Occupied Territories

In Palestine, it is hard to find resident women filmmakers as the Palestinian people are so dispersed in exile throughout the world, and finding the means to make films inside the Occupied Territories is extremely difficult. Mai Masri, a Palestinian resident in Lebanon, was the first woman to start to make films about Palestinians in refugee camps throughout the Middle East. She is one of the pioneers of Palestinian documentary and especially of the trend that has become dominant in Palestinian filmmaking: a focus on children’s experience of Palestine. Her films illustrate how the struggle for a national identity in Palestine is often mixed with the struggle for personal, physical freedom. Motherhood, wifehood and womanhood are politicised identities in Palestine. In her earliest films such as Children of Shatila (1998) and Frontiers of Dreams and Fears (2001), she offers up children’s perspectives to illustrate the politicisation of even the most unlikely participants in the struggle against oppression. A child’s perspective is portrayed as a struggle with the past and the future that is on-going, as the child represents the hope as well as the hopelessness of the Palestinian cause.

SOCIALISM ON SAFARI: WILDLIFE AND NATION-BUILDING IN POSTCOLONIAL TANZANIA, 1961–77

2015 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
JULIE M. WEISKOPF
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Wild Animals ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Conservation Policies ◽  
Wild Fauna ◽  
History Of ◽  
Market Driven

AbstractThis article examines the fraught history of officials' innovative uses of wildlife in socialist Tanzania, as they pursued both international and domestic agendas with the country's wild fauna. Internationally, officials sought to enhance Tanzania's reputation and gain foreign support through its conservation policies and diplomatic use of wild animals. Domestically, officials recognized the utility of wildlife for a number of nation-building agendas, ranging from national identity to economic development. However, internal contradictions riddled the wildlife economy, creating difficulty for government officials and party leaders when balancing socialist commitments with an effective, market-driven industry.

scholarly journals Polsko-litewskie dziedzictwo kulturowe – różnice w świadomości społecznej. Perspektywy zbliżenia dzięki wspólnym bohaterom narodowym na przykładzie Michała Kleofasa Ogińskiego

2021 ◽  
pp. 231-261
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Gumper
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Political Activist ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Education ◽  
National Hero ◽  
The 19Th Century

The uncomfortable situation of Poles in Lithuania is, among other things, the effect of Lithuanian historical education. Excerpts from the textbook on the history of Lithuania show diametrical differences in contemporary ideas about the past of both nations. Shared heroes are useful to overcome prejudices of the previous century (which affect the image of 1385-1795). One of them is Michał Kleofas Ogiński, Lithuanian nobleman, a political activist during the last years of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and two decades after its collapse. He has the rank of a great national hero in Lithuania and Belarus but is valued in Poland above all because of his piano compositions. The analysis of fragments of his work Memoirs about Poland and Poles helps us to regard a representative of the noble nation from a different perspective. It makes us aware of the cohesion of Polish and Lithuanian national identity at the turn of the 19th century, helps us to appreciate the heritage of the past and offers a chance to build positive relations between us. Rectifying a distorted vision of history is a prospect for a mature partnership now and in the future.

The Ottoman “other”: (Re)Framing the Past of the Modern Turkish Nation

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-97
Author(s):  
Iulia Oprea
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Essential Requirement ◽  
Nationalist Discourse ◽  
The Past ◽  
Building Process

Abstract The paper examines the process of the Turkish nation building process starting from the premises that whether we talk about culture, religion, ethnicity, language, traditions or other elements nations identify with and take pride in, continuity in time is an essential requirement to legitimize the bases of national identity in the nationalist discourse.

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