Memory and the Postcolony: African Anthropology and the Critique of Power

The critique of power in contemporary Africa calls for a new approach to the making of political subjectivities. Through theoretically informed anthropology, this book meets the urgent need to rethink our understanding of the moral and political force of memory, its official and unofficial forms, its moves between the personal and the social in postcolonial transformations. Memory and the Postcolony brings these transformations into perspective. It is divided into three sections in which distinguished anthropologists explore death and subjectivity; the memory work of elections and public commissions; and fundamentalism and the future. Presenting a sustained comparative analysis of memory as a politicized reality, the book will be essential reading for all scholars of postcolonial societies, as well as all those with an interest in contemporary Africa.