Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: By focusing on two memoirs recently published by former officers of the 1968-1991 Malian military regime, Dembélé’s Transferts définitifs and Soungalo Samaké’s Ma vie de soldat, this essay examines a new autobiographical practice, which aims to uncover some of the most troubling episodes of Malian history, and raise questions about individual complicity, collective responsibility and amnesty. This essay demonstrates how these narratives engage with the culture of memory dominating current Malian sociopolitical life since the 1991 democratization, and complement the more visible and celebratory public forms and institutionalized initiatives of remembering and examination of the past. By inducing further and deeper reflections on the tremendous transformations brought by the mass demonstration of 1991, the determinations and processes of political changes, these narratives contribute in an unexpected manner to the discourse of national reconciliation in contemporary Mali.
Source: Cahiers d études africaines
Author: Alioune Sow
Language: French
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W50489877