Challenging the Identity Politics of the Sudanese Regime. Ambivalence of Collective Belongings in Underground Political Movements
Type de matériel :
38
In the context of Omar Al-Bechir’s Sudan (1989-2018), marked by policies of Arabization and Islamization, this article questions the complex and shifting relationships of collective social belongings and identification among movements of illegal opposition. Based on an ethnographic survey within two protest movements which place the ethnicization of conflicts and politics at the center of their struggle, this research proposes to place the ordinary practices and representations of activists concerning the forms of identification at the heart of the reflection. This leads us to question first the reality of a hardening of identity borders in Sudan, which has been described many times, and the roots of the alternative political project carried by this new social movement. However, the activists also mobilize categories and repertoires of action inspired by tribal hierarchies and processes of categorization of the social world according to ethnotribal criteria constructed historically thus participating in their reproduction and reconfiguration. Finally, these modalities of hierarchization are not the only key to the interpretation of the actors, but are imbedded in identification systems such as class, gender, age, citadinity. Thus, the plural identities of the militants are constantly recomposed according to multiple arrangements and constitute mobilizable reservoirs of practices and interpretation of the social world as much as a stake in the political struggles of revolutionary Sudan.
Réseaux sociaux