Memoirs of women-in-conflict: Ugandan ex-combatants and the production of knowledge on security and peacebuilding

Abstract

The limitations of conventional accounts of security and peacebuilding drawing upon the ‘expert’ knowledge of military elites, policymakers and civil society representatives have been widely recognized. This has led security and peacebuilding policymakers, including through the United Nations Women, Peace and Security agenda, to search for alternative forms of knowledge, such as memoirs, photographs or oral histories, that better reflect lived experiences within local communities. Building on existing work on memoirs as knowledge production artefacts and on feminist security studies, this article demystifies experiential security knowledge through an analysis of three memoirs written by women ex-combatants in Uganda. We argue that while the memoirs offer complex and contradictory narratives about women ex-combatants, they are also the products of transnational mediated processes, whereby the interests of power translate complex narratives into consolidated representations and sturdy tropes of the abducted African woman ex-combatant. This means that although the three memoirs provide some hints as to transformative ways of thinking about security and peace, and offer dynamic accounts of personal experiences, they also reflect the politics of dominant representational practices.

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“…In this light, the production of knowledge through discourses is an integral yet oft-overlooked channel through which power is expressed and sustained. For instance, Curtis et al (2022: 3) show how interests of power reduce complex narratives about women ex-combatants into ‘consolidated representations and sturdy tropes’. Further, given the productive nature of discourse, any particular representation of identity is unstable, implying that over time a different version of reality may emerge that allows for alternative approaches that had been previously unthinkable.…”