Performing Guzo Adwa: Power, Politics and Contestations

Abstract

This paper documents a history and politics of memory project called Guzo Adwa. It highlights how, over the last eight years, Guzo Adwa emerged as a popular, performative commemoration of the battle of Adwa. Organised spontaneously by ambitious young men, who are passionate about history and adventure, culture and national politics, art and memory, Guzo Adwa emerged as a political performative, poetic and symbolic pilgrimage of the victory of Adwa. In its multiplicity, Guzo Adwa, which could be roughly interpreted as ‘Journey Adwa’, added to the already contested memory landscape pertaining to Adwa. The particularity of the project is that it has been organised neither as a mode of rule nor as an instrument of resistance. Moreover, the paper highlights how even this annual ritualized journey, as the memory project, embraced official and marginal political narratives, serving as a stage where varied economic interests and political issues surrounding national history were transpired. The paper is based on both primary and secondary sources. A total of ten formal interviews were conducted with key informants participating in Guzo Adwa in addition to informal discussions with others who have played some role in in the event , and other related memory projects. Newspaper archival research was conducted considering Addis Zemen reporting of Adwa commemoration as an ethnographic site. An attempt is made to attend events organised by the Guzo Adwa, especially the farewell ceremony of the eighth journey to Adwa. Finally, we try to locate the particular history of this memory project into national politics of memory and theoretical and conceptual debates in memory studies.