Storytelling can be a process of seeking social equilibrium after violence. We examine this proposition through the stories of Ajok, an Acholi woman who was abducted by the rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda and who was forced into marriage and motherhood. We consider how her stories contest discrimination by her neighbours and family since her return, creatively reinterpreting the past to defend her innocence and moral character throughout the war and to defend her rightful place in present society as an Acholi woman and mother. The article concludes by reflecting on the value of locally based and culturally relevant storytelling for survivors in the field and practice of transitional justice.
Based on analysis of newspapers and secondary sources, this article examines the gendered construction of the national imagery of the war between the Ugandan government and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in an effort to expand current conceptual understanding of the exclusion experienced by children born of forced marriage inside the LRA. Uganda developed as a militarised and masculine post-colony and yet nation-building for President Museveni involved crafting a national imagery that drew upon development discourses of gender and children to position himself as the benevolent father of the nation. Invoking Veena Das’ ‘figure of the abducted woman’, I argue that the Ugandan government mobilised the figure of the abducted Acholi girl to legitimise both its governance and the war. The article concludes that the resulting narrative provided no legitimate social or political space in the national imagery for the children of the abducted girls.
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