International audienceThis essay appraises “Sudan Studies” following the 2011 secession of South Sudan. It asks two questions. First, what has Sudan Studies been as a colonial and postcolonial field of academic inquiry and how should or must it change? Second, should we continue to write about a single arena of Sudan Studies now that Sudan has split apart? The authors advance a “manifesto” for Sudan Studies by urging scholars to map out more intellectual terrain by attending to non-elite actors and women; grass-roots and local history; the environment and the arts; oral sources; and interdisciplinary studies of culture, politics, and society. They propose that scholars can transcend the changing boundaries of the nation-state, and recognize connections forged through past and present migrations and contacts, by studying the Sudan as a zone rather than a fixed country. Finally, in their introduction to this bilingual special issue, they highlight the increasing relevance of French scholarship to the endeavor of rethinking Sudan Studies
L’épisode révolutionnaire soudanais qui débute mi-décembre 2018 dans des villes de province culmine en avril 2019 avec la destitution d’Omar al-Bashir et l’occupation de la place al-Qiyada. Cet épisode marque la fin de la première phase de ce soulèvement populaire. Au-delà de l’aspect événementiel, cet article plaide pour inscrire dans le temps long cette révolte d’une ampleur inégalée dans l’histoire sociale et politique du Soudan. Ce texte entend la décrypter au travers de trois axes d’analyse. Tout d’abord, la révolution soudanaise est à lire au prisme de l’érosion du consensus populaire et idéologique que le régime a cherché à bâtir depuis 1989. Ensuite, cet article replace la période actuelle au sein d’un processus antérieur de massification et de diffusion de contestations protéiformes et multidimensionnelles. Enfin, ce soulèvement dans un espace autoritaire peut être appréhendé au travers de sa spatialisation et d’une géographie des inégalités sociales qui mettent à jour les ressorts d’une révolte dans laquelle des mécanismes de classe autant que de génération sont en jeu.
This article attempts to trace a geography of the memory of the 1924 Revolution in colonial Sudan. It springs from a glaring paradox: though the 1924 Revolution is one of the best documented episodes of colonial history, it has not affected collective memory in the same way other episodes from the country’s modern history have. Eyewitness accounts were first produced in the 1930s and have continued to be published up to the present day; for some of the central episodes of 1924, there are as many versions as there are narrators. The purpose of this article is to investigate the facets of these memories and those who have produced them. It explores two characteristics central to the geography of memory of 1924: on the one hand, the idea that in spite of the number of accounts about the revolution, this event is not fully known, shrouded as it is in mystery, filled with unspoken truths. On the other hand, it is believed that certain people in 1924 “said too much” and became spies, and that this is one of the main reasons why the revolution failed. Finally, the article will tie this peculiar memory configuration into the social trauma that was one of the consequences of the Revolution of 1924, along with the unspoken social divisions that followed it.
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