1 00:00:01,880 --> 00:00:06,680 Good afternoon, everyone, welcome to our afternoon session of hegemonic narratives. 2 00:00:06,680 --> 00:00:09,230 A conference that we've been running today since 9:30, 3 00:00:09,230 --> 00:00:17,900 looking at different levels of where hegemonic narratives in the memory of politics are being used and abused and misused. 4 00:00:17,900 --> 00:00:24,230 The third panel we have prepared for you this afternoon is looking at the local level at the grassroots level. 5 00:00:24,230 --> 00:00:28,820 And let me first introduce the moderator of this panel will then introduce the speakers 6 00:00:28,820 --> 00:00:32,750 and after which we're going to have our keynote speaker and then we will wrap up. 7 00:00:32,750 --> 00:00:39,080 So the conference is pretty much at the end. Not yet, though, and we only have about an hour and a half to go. 8 00:00:39,080 --> 00:00:43,220 So I hope you're still with us and you're still able to follow us. 9 00:00:43,220 --> 00:00:50,420 Please don't forget to ask questions and the Q&A, and at the end of the conference, we will again enable the chat function. 10 00:00:50,420 --> 00:01:01,100 So let me introduce Dr. Katherine Buckleitner, who's an IKEA research fellow at an international relations of Lady Margaret Hall, 11 00:01:01,100 --> 00:01:06,800 and her research mainly focuses on collective identity, memory and values within international relations. 12 00:01:06,800 --> 00:01:12,260 She's just submitted a book manuscript, so what you have, the space age should be coming out very soon. 13 00:01:12,260 --> 00:01:16,490 It's with Oxford University Press or Cambridge University Press. 14 00:01:16,490 --> 00:01:20,690 Now, I'm not entirely sure. But anyway, Catherine, the floor is yours. 15 00:01:20,690 --> 00:01:28,820 Good luck with the panel. OK, so hello, everyone, and welcome to panel three from the morning sessions. 16 00:01:28,820 --> 00:01:35,030 The question remained as to when and how hegemonic narratives actually become hegemonic. 17 00:01:35,030 --> 00:01:42,980 Several presenters already hinted at the fact that an elitist political construction of memory is not enough. 18 00:01:42,980 --> 00:01:52,730 Instead, commemorated become truly hegemonic. It must somehow begin to resonate more broadly with the people in this last panel. 19 00:01:52,730 --> 00:01:57,950 We are therefore moving our attention to the grassroots and local level and ask 20 00:01:57,950 --> 00:02:04,970 how societal actors can shape and challenge national narratives from below. 21 00:02:04,970 --> 00:02:09,170 Now we have three speakers lined up who will cover three different regions. 22 00:02:09,170 --> 00:02:15,170 First, Latin America, then we move to Europe and last but not least to Africa. 23 00:02:15,170 --> 00:02:23,960 Each of the presentations will take 12 minutes, and afterwards they'll be 20 minutes reserved for questions and answers. 24 00:02:23,960 --> 00:02:31,490 If you have any queries, please write them in the Q&A box and I will do my best to bring them to the attention of the speakers. 25 00:02:31,490 --> 00:02:35,120 We are starting with André so de Souza Santos, 26 00:02:35,120 --> 00:02:41,900 who is lecturer and director of the Brazilian Studies Programme at Oxford University's Latin American Centre. 27 00:02:41,900 --> 00:02:45,770 And Reza is a political anthropologist in her research. 28 00:02:45,770 --> 00:02:52,040 She specifically looks at heritage, policymaking and grassroots activism in cities. 29 00:02:52,040 --> 00:03:00,560 In 2019, she published a monograph on the politics of memory, urban cultural heritage in Brazil and today. 30 00:03:00,560 --> 00:03:09,250 And Reza, we'll talk about how narratives of slavery are recounted in Brazil's former gold mines. 31 00:03:09,250 --> 00:03:20,470 Thank you very much for the invitation. I'm very pleased to be here, I will share my screen with you to show my my PowerPoint. 32 00:03:20,470 --> 00:03:27,770 Please let me know if you already can see my screen. Can you see it? 33 00:03:27,770 --> 00:03:39,560 Yep. Very good. So, yes, I'm going to be talking about some inconvenience narratives such as how slavery is remembered in in Brazil, 34 00:03:39,560 --> 00:03:43,940 how it's how narratives about slavery appear. 35 00:03:43,940 --> 00:03:51,230 And I'm going to be reading my paper. So if I'm slightly looking to the side, please don't worry. 36 00:03:51,230 --> 00:04:04,040 Silence and infamy is most concerning race prevail in Brazil, and the same silence exists in historic depictions of slavery and slavery in Brazil. 37 00:04:04,040 --> 00:04:15,890 Is this mainly represented through a recollection of torture objects and very rarely we have any biographical accounts or monuments of former slaves? 38 00:04:15,890 --> 00:04:30,590 And here in the in the picture of my first lines, you can see some of these torture objects, which are usually portrayed when you go to museums. 39 00:04:30,590 --> 00:04:35,480 However, there is, of course, the idea that there are different forms of remembering, 40 00:04:35,480 --> 00:04:41,450 and this paper will look at the ways in which slavery is remembered through spiritual 41 00:04:41,450 --> 00:04:47,960 narratives in former gold mines in the former gold mines offer to pray to Brazil, 42 00:04:47,960 --> 00:04:53,120 and I'm going to explain a little bit about this seeding the descendants of slaves. 43 00:04:53,120 --> 00:05:02,840 They usually work as tour guides, and they tell the history of slavery by emphasise the presence of slaves is spirits. 44 00:05:02,840 --> 00:05:13,460 Slaves spirits manifest themselves physically when visitors or guides describe physical pain or accidents in mines, 45 00:05:13,460 --> 00:05:17,780 memories of slavery enacted in narratives about spirits. 46 00:05:17,780 --> 00:05:29,730 This constitutes a sort of power shift where former oppressed groups actually active control after death, which they did not have when a life. 47 00:05:29,730 --> 00:05:33,480 So one of the questions I try to answer if this paper is, 48 00:05:33,480 --> 00:05:40,920 can this power of the excluded who now controls the mind setting go beyond the mine territories? 49 00:05:40,920 --> 00:05:51,620 Do people actually visit mines? And what is the potential and the limits of this off the record historical narratives? 50 00:05:51,620 --> 00:05:59,080 So I know this is one of the mines. 51 00:05:59,080 --> 00:06:06,640 In many countries around the world, the success of cultural heritage narratives and create a sense of national identity 52 00:06:06,640 --> 00:06:12,550 is viewed in the construction of a common enemy in post-colonial suicides. 53 00:06:12,550 --> 00:06:21,820 The sentiment, again suppressed or colonised, was particularly strong in forging a national identity in post-colonial Brazil. 54 00:06:21,820 --> 00:06:34,810 There were many former slaves European mixed race, sorry Europeans, Brazilian mixed race and indigenous groups, and the focus of on a common enemy. 55 00:06:34,810 --> 00:06:40,510 The colonisers had much to offer in the search of a Brazilian identity. 56 00:06:40,510 --> 00:06:47,050 So there is this construction of a Brazilian myths that play down ethnic complexities and 57 00:06:47,050 --> 00:06:52,660 generally to the simplification of history and a polarisation between US Brazilians, 58 00:06:52,660 --> 00:06:55,360 which was a very heterogeneous groups. 59 00:06:55,360 --> 00:07:06,520 And they the colonisers this doilies was very much based and and created monuments on independence and struggles, 60 00:07:06,520 --> 00:07:15,550 and the set appropriate is particularly important on that. So here you have one of the heroes of Brazil's independence movement. 61 00:07:15,550 --> 00:07:24,250 His name is shredding sheets, and there are statues to celebrate today in cheese and miniaturised conspiracy, 62 00:07:24,250 --> 00:07:28,390 which was one of the plots against the Portuguese all over this city. 63 00:07:28,390 --> 00:07:36,720 The cities are UNESCO's World Heritage Site since the 1980s and is seeing monuments and street names and everywhere in this city. 64 00:07:36,720 --> 00:07:46,060 This celebration of independence movements. This independence movement, of course, creates a sense of of Brazilians, 65 00:07:46,060 --> 00:07:55,510 which doesn't really go into the complexities of these slaves who made up 80 percent of the population. 66 00:07:55,510 --> 00:08:06,010 But of course, they challenge this national identity because they they used form a very heterogeneous group in culture, language and place of birth. 67 00:08:06,010 --> 00:08:13,780 So how is Lavery's remembering historic sites such as Warpaint, which are so important for a Brazilian national identity? 68 00:08:13,780 --> 00:08:21,550 So in a place like Prezzo, as Labour is mainly remembered through this recollection of torture objects that are very, 69 00:08:21,550 --> 00:08:24,760 as I said, there are no monuments for foreign slaves. 70 00:08:24,760 --> 00:08:39,150 And because of this, this gap in the representation of slavery than does the spiritual accounts in former gold mines, they try to fill this gap. 71 00:08:39,150 --> 00:08:43,260 So let's go and see how the people are telling this story. 72 00:08:43,260 --> 00:08:47,930 There is very little represent in the city. 73 00:08:47,930 --> 00:08:57,890 So when you go to former gold mines, the guides will tell the history of slavery by presents you to these live spirits, 74 00:08:57,890 --> 00:09:06,170 and I'm just going to narrate how some of these encounters take place. 75 00:09:06,170 --> 00:09:12,190 This is freezing here. November 25, 2013. 76 00:09:12,190 --> 00:09:20,730 A receipts president warning before we arrived at the first gold mine Big Day guided me through the dark, cold and wet mine, 77 00:09:20,730 --> 00:09:30,630 greeted my tour guides and before we started the tour, he was already telling me that I need to crouch in the narrow and low corridors. 78 00:09:30,630 --> 00:09:42,730 He would say imagining that time went back by 200 years and you were a 20 year old man black man working mines in very poor. 79 00:09:42,730 --> 00:09:50,630 Big day was the guide's insistence that I should imagine I was a slave to release all my fears. 80 00:09:50,630 --> 00:10:01,390 As we walk through the mine. My God stopped walking and I had to go through the mine, which was this very narrow small space. 81 00:10:01,390 --> 00:10:10,700 Alan. As I kept walking, it was dark and humid, and I could still hear the voices of of the guides, 82 00:10:10,700 --> 00:10:19,060 though they were more distance and they would say that I need to understand what slaves went through back in those days. 83 00:10:19,060 --> 00:10:26,470 The ceiling was getting lower and lower as I walked and I had to squat in a very uncomfortable and claustrophobic position. 84 00:10:26,470 --> 00:10:34,210 And I wondered if it was still possible to move forwards or how I would move backwards when my tour guides yelled. 85 00:10:34,210 --> 00:10:39,790 Can you imagine if I would leave and you'd have to stay in the mine for three days? 86 00:10:39,790 --> 00:10:47,680 Of course, I could not imagine that. So I tried to move back, but they started to hammer against the wall. 87 00:10:47,680 --> 00:10:50,890 But it does seem very sharp and repetitive sounds. 88 00:10:50,890 --> 00:11:00,520 And they said men died from this noise and they go blind was when the particles would reach their eyes, 89 00:11:00,520 --> 00:11:06,430 whether others would have their lungs turned into stone when breathing the powder day after day. 90 00:11:06,430 --> 00:11:10,990 And the noise continued for a short while when it became very irritating. 91 00:11:10,990 --> 00:11:17,580 And each time I tried to return and I failed because it was very slippery. 92 00:11:17,580 --> 00:11:25,140 So the history of slavery in the mines is represented through the recreation of earlier working conditions, 93 00:11:25,140 --> 00:11:30,270 including sound, sights and sensations, experience humidity, 94 00:11:30,270 --> 00:11:34,800 darkness, noise in the claustrophobic feeling the low and they recorded the words in the 95 00:11:34,800 --> 00:11:40,560 mines hopes to illustrate how these slaves lived back in the 18th century. 96 00:11:40,560 --> 00:11:45,810 While stories of violence against slaves that are told in mines written points out that there 97 00:11:45,810 --> 00:11:50,820 are also paradoxical colonial attributions of power and the same people who are enslaved, 98 00:11:50,820 --> 00:11:56,820 raped and chained would also believed to have the power of sorcery incorporated. 99 00:11:56,820 --> 00:12:02,370 The power of slaves and sorcerers is also very common in local stories. 100 00:12:02,370 --> 00:12:14,490 But this power did do not end with the sorcery in the past, because nowadays these spirits of slaves rather than those of mine honours, 101 00:12:14,490 --> 00:12:22,740 they dominate mining territories and they may allow the entrance to mines or they may not. 102 00:12:22,740 --> 00:12:31,650 As some other guides explain to me, you need to be approved by the spirits of the people there, otherwise you do not answer the mine. 103 00:12:31,650 --> 00:12:35,490 There are people who arrive here and they ask me to and through the mines. 104 00:12:35,490 --> 00:12:42,150 But when I arrive at the entrance, I fall down. They beat me up, throw me on the floor with that person. 105 00:12:42,150 --> 00:12:53,880 You do not answer. But when the person has a clear soul, the mysticism and sensibility that makes their and mine. 106 00:12:53,880 --> 00:13:06,130 Then we came in through the mind. The people there are the spirits of these slaves sort of be lost here. 107 00:13:06,130 --> 00:13:14,620 And when they do, no one to side search went through the mine. They beat the person up making the visit or the guides fall down or heat their 108 00:13:14,620 --> 00:13:19,300 heads against the ceiling and the walls and inflict headaches after visits. 109 00:13:19,300 --> 00:13:25,120 Those are seen as typical signs that these spirits had not granted permission to through 110 00:13:25,120 --> 00:13:30,490 local historians involved in spiritual infliction of pain in minds that are so common. 111 00:13:30,490 --> 00:13:34,900 The guides report offering tours for people across the world and Brazil, 112 00:13:34,900 --> 00:13:40,000 while the local population is usually afraid of mines and do not always visit them. 113 00:13:40,000 --> 00:13:46,810 Kindles are a visual expression of reports about physical pain caused by spirits. 114 00:13:46,810 --> 00:13:58,050 And there are many candles sometimes in the minds to avoid seeing figures and and being haunted by some of these spirits. 115 00:13:58,050 --> 00:14:08,760 And in mines, you can also see and hear the revealing, OK, I'm about to finish some of the revealing dreams that some guides have. 116 00:14:08,760 --> 00:14:16,590 I was going to narrate here one of these dreams, but I'm running out of time, but I usually through through this encounter. 117 00:14:16,590 --> 00:14:22,890 Resolve is Labour's spirit to inflict pain on people who try to run through the mines as well as dreams. 118 00:14:22,890 --> 00:14:32,850 They are usually feeling gaps in the history, for example, why in a population that are worth 80 percent of slaves, there were no rebellion. 119 00:14:32,850 --> 00:14:38,910 And then usually this disaster that everybody asks comes with stories of Oh, 120 00:14:38,910 --> 00:14:46,380 maybe these slaves groups were enough, were not cohesive, and they talk about conflicts in the past. 121 00:14:46,380 --> 00:14:56,040 And these conflicts are very manifest and very vivid in the dreams that people revealed to have had, as well as the spiritual encounters. 122 00:14:56,040 --> 00:15:07,780 However, these stories, they try to. To give this idea of how slavery happens in Brazil is things that are very few 123 00:15:07,780 --> 00:15:13,240 biographical accounts and very few information on the geological knowledge these spirits, 124 00:15:13,240 --> 00:15:18,910 these slaves had and in how their activities were on an everyday lives. 125 00:15:18,910 --> 00:15:25,540 These these narratives they sued don't move beyond the mining territories. 126 00:15:25,540 --> 00:15:31,060 There are very few people visiting mines and away from the mines. 127 00:15:31,060 --> 00:15:36,240 These stories remain very much of the records. Thank you. 128 00:15:36,240 --> 00:15:47,820 Thank you very much, and gentlemen, for a fascinating snapshot into how inconvenient narratives emerge as counter-narratives on the grassroots level. 129 00:15:47,820 --> 00:15:53,580 And now we are moving to a different region, Europe, and we're going to hear from Graeme Dawson, 130 00:15:53,580 --> 00:16:02,520 who is professor of historical cultural studies at the School of Humanities Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories at the University of Brighton. 131 00:16:02,520 --> 00:16:11,980 Graham investigates the interrelations between memory narratives and lived experience with a particular interest in personal memories. 132 00:16:11,980 --> 00:16:20,610 His main focus is on the politics of memory in the Irish peace process and on legacies of the Northern Irish conflict in Ireland and Britain. 133 00:16:20,610 --> 00:16:27,840 He is the author of many seminal works, amongst them Making Peace with the Past Memory, Trauma and the Irish Troubles. 134 00:16:27,840 --> 00:16:37,790 Today, Graham is going to talk about grassroots oral history and the politics of hegemonic memory in West Belfast. 135 00:16:37,790 --> 00:16:43,940 Thank you, Katherine, thank you to Jesse and Yohanna for inviting me to speak at this conference and for 136 00:16:43,940 --> 00:16:52,160 organising all the hard work you've put into organising this inspirational online gathering. 137 00:16:52,160 --> 00:17:03,560 This paper draws from my current research with an on the Dukas Oral History Archive at Falls Community Council in West Belfast. 138 00:17:03,560 --> 00:17:10,340 Dukas was established in 1999 to collect oral history interviews on local experiences of the conflicts 139 00:17:10,340 --> 00:17:16,910 to develop experiential storytelling as a tool of reconciliation and of conflict resolution, 140 00:17:16,910 --> 00:17:22,880 and to promote cross-community dialogue and grassroots agency in addressing legacies of the past. 141 00:17:22,880 --> 00:17:28,370 This stemmed from a shared but deeply contested local history. 142 00:17:28,370 --> 00:17:37,250 The paper aims to situate Dukakis's grass works and grass roots memory work what I call its praxis of reference of remembering 143 00:17:37,250 --> 00:17:44,030 in relation to the hegemonic narratives of the Northern Ireland and the British UK states during and after the war. 144 00:17:44,030 --> 00:17:52,940 As these play out in the context of ongoing memory wars and conflicts about the unresolved legacies of the war in Northern Ireland, 145 00:17:52,940 --> 00:17:55,640 these conflicts central questions of legitimacy, 146 00:17:55,640 --> 00:18:03,890 responsibility and atonement for the armed violence committed by state process, state and state folk forces. 147 00:18:03,890 --> 00:18:09,920 And I should just say that I've just realised that my focus this paper has ended up being on how hydroponic narratives work, 148 00:18:09,920 --> 00:18:15,110 rather than how they challenge how they challenge. So apologies for that. 149 00:18:15,110 --> 00:18:17,640 The The is organised in three parts. 150 00:18:17,640 --> 00:18:26,870 I wanted to begin with a very brief conceptualisation of the archive in relation to the the West Belfast interfaces discuss 151 00:18:26,870 --> 00:18:33,290 works across the interface between the loyalist British Shankill area and the Irish nationalist areas of the falls, 152 00:18:33,290 --> 00:18:40,580 which you can see here on this sketch map west of the city centre of Belfast. 153 00:18:40,580 --> 00:18:48,770 And this relationship between the Shankill and the Falls appears in this British Army map from 1972, the Shankill Road, 154 00:18:48,770 --> 00:18:56,930 the Falls Road and here between the orange and the green, we can see the interface between these two areas. 155 00:18:56,930 --> 00:19:06,410 These and other interfaces were the location for the start of the war in Belfast on the 14th and 15th of August 1969, 156 00:19:06,410 --> 00:19:10,400 when police and loyalists invaded the nationalist areas down. 157 00:19:10,400 --> 00:19:18,770 These linking streets between the Shankill and the falls in West Belfast has remained a central zone in the war thereafter, 158 00:19:18,770 --> 00:19:23,420 with one of the highest numbers of casualties and death rates from the conflict. 159 00:19:23,420 --> 00:19:33,560 The red line on this early 70s map shows the roots of the Cooper Way, Peace Lie War, Iraq sojourn in the war, 160 00:19:33,560 --> 00:19:42,860 along with other barriers that continue to materialise and reproduce the social and geographical divisions of the area. 161 00:19:42,860 --> 00:19:46,790 Now Do Castles projects its original aim, 162 00:19:46,790 --> 00:19:55,970 and the first project since 2001 focussed on the collective experience of the nationalist communities of the Falls in August 1969, 163 00:19:55,970 --> 00:20:06,080 and this widened out to a broader historical enquiry. But since 2010, Duke has a storeyed history work across the interfaces through Connexions, 164 00:20:06,080 --> 00:20:10,430 with loyalist community groups in the Shankill and elsewhere in the city, 165 00:20:10,430 --> 00:20:19,000 leading to several oral history collections, all of which are deposited in the archives through this this cross community work. 166 00:20:19,000 --> 00:20:27,900 Do his work is based on principles of informed consent, plurality acknowledgement and respect of differences. 167 00:20:27,900 --> 00:20:37,760 And it aims to create conversations both public and private about history and memory between local actors who can pardon me, 168 00:20:37,760 --> 00:20:45,420 who are differently placed historically in relation to the British state. 169 00:20:45,420 --> 00:20:50,610 Now, saying to my second section the question of hegemonic narratives I wanted to start, 170 00:20:50,610 --> 00:20:54,720 I mean, there's a whole set of caveats which could be on pitch at this point. 171 00:20:54,720 --> 00:21:05,550 But Northern Ireland is going on history of a successful hegemonic project bringing consent to state power or bringing social cohesion. 172 00:21:05,550 --> 00:21:09,750 The reformation of the UK state through the partition of Ireland in 1921, 173 00:21:09,750 --> 00:21:15,780 an Irish nationalist minority giving allegiance to the governments of the Irish Free State in Dublin 174 00:21:15,780 --> 00:21:23,070 was forced into the six counts a unionist state of Northern Ireland within the UK from its inception. 175 00:21:23,070 --> 00:21:27,750 The Northern Ireland state treats it its nationalist minority as an enemy within 176 00:21:27,750 --> 00:21:33,060 requiring exceptional but permanent repressive containment by an armed police force, 177 00:21:33,060 --> 00:21:40,710 including the Feared B Special Police Militia, on the basis of the 1922 Special Powers Act. 178 00:21:40,710 --> 00:21:49,770 And this supports the devolved governments in what was effectively a one party state ruled by the Ulster Unionist Party up until 1972, 179 00:21:49,770 --> 00:21:58,320 when devolution was suspended and direct rule of Northern Ireland from London was imposed by the British state. 180 00:21:58,320 --> 00:22:04,380 The breakdown of Union has state control in 1968 69 led to the Northern Ireland war, 181 00:22:04,380 --> 00:22:13,800 in which from 1971 unionists in British power came to be challenged by the emergence of a new resurgent Irish Republican Army, the IRA. 182 00:22:13,800 --> 00:22:23,570 The Provisional IRA, supported by a revolutionary Republican movement, but refused to acknowledge the authority of the UK state. 183 00:22:23,570 --> 00:22:25,790 Now, if we understand hegemonic narratives, 184 00:22:25,790 --> 00:22:36,440 then as those that work to secure public legitimacy for the purposes and the actions of state institutions and operatives, a legitimising narrative, 185 00:22:36,440 --> 00:22:45,380 a narrative justifying the measures used in repressive containment of Northern Irish nationalist communities in terms of law and order versus 186 00:22:45,380 --> 00:22:56,510 the Republican terrorist threat to the state can be traced throughout its history and well into the peace process beginning in 1993 94. 187 00:22:56,510 --> 00:23:02,330 So my focus here is on the deployment of this hegemonic narrative at the very start of the 188 00:23:02,330 --> 00:23:10,190 conflict and one particular moment in 1969 and its effects on the formations of conflict memory. 189 00:23:10,190 --> 00:23:19,250 And I'm only going to be able really to explore the loyalist dimension of that memory rather than, as I'd hoped, the Nationalist Council memory. 190 00:23:19,250 --> 00:23:29,390 So please bear that in mind. Now, the war in West Belfast began on the 14th 15th of August 1969 with a pogrom against Irish nationalist communities, 191 00:23:29,390 --> 00:23:33,500 which was led by state forces an armed invasion. 192 00:23:33,500 --> 00:23:40,160 The words of the official government enquiry of the nationalist falls from the Shankill was 193 00:23:40,160 --> 00:23:46,470 fronted by the Royal Ulster Constabulary using armoured vehicles armed with machine guns. 194 00:23:46,470 --> 00:23:53,640 Police and members of the B Specials militia, heavily armed, including with submachine guns and high velocity rifles, 195 00:23:53,640 --> 00:23:59,400 worked with loyalist mobs organised by the paramilitary Shankill Defence Association, 196 00:23:59,400 --> 00:24:03,210 who were also heavily armed with guns and hundreds of petrol bombs. 197 00:24:03,210 --> 00:24:10,710 This overwhelming and deadly force was deployed against an unarmed civilian population. 198 00:24:10,710 --> 00:24:17,340 Shooting nationalists in the street and in their own homes. Burning hundreds of nationalist houses and properties, 199 00:24:17,340 --> 00:24:24,910 expelling thousands of people from their homes, injuring hundreds and causing terror and mayhem. 200 00:24:24,910 --> 00:24:30,730 State discourse from unionist politicians and the police responded to this crisis as a threat to 201 00:24:30,730 --> 00:24:37,720 law and order by Republicans at the official public enquiry into the events of the Lord Garman, 202 00:24:37,720 --> 00:24:42,010 the police testified all RUC ranks testified. 203 00:24:42,010 --> 00:24:48,240 Testifying Roscommon maintained that they faced an IRA uprising. 204 00:24:48,240 --> 00:24:51,960 This justification was echoed by Belfast police commissioner, 205 00:24:51,960 --> 00:25:03,780 who also admitted under testimony that loyalist violence quote was one of the sort of blind spots that the RUC of the ICC have given that quote. 206 00:25:03,780 --> 00:25:12,450 The training of the force from its inception in 1921 had always been against what we call the subversive element the IRA. 207 00:25:12,450 --> 00:25:14,390 And so. 208 00:25:14,390 --> 00:25:24,830 Get the IEC deputy commissioner in his testimony to the Scotland enquiry, acknowledged that quote no IRA attack took place anywhere in Belfast. 209 00:25:24,830 --> 00:25:30,320 That's not actually a quote from the deputy commissioner. It's a quote from McCain's history. 210 00:25:30,320 --> 00:25:36,980 But in reality, the IRA in Belfast in 1969 was defunct. 211 00:25:36,980 --> 00:25:42,320 The report of the Scullin enquiry endorsed the justification narrative, 212 00:25:42,320 --> 00:25:51,290 the legitimating narrative of the state of the police and reproduced its imaginings and its denials and its silences. 213 00:25:51,290 --> 00:26:00,470 And the report largely excuse the how you see on the B specials and absolving the police of any significant involvement in the invasion. 214 00:26:00,470 --> 00:26:08,090 And in doing so, it upheld the reputation of state institutions and actors as moral agents of law and order, 215 00:26:08,090 --> 00:26:19,520 and installed a hegemonic official narrative and memory about the start of the war that's obscured the reality of state violence in precipitating its. 216 00:26:19,520 --> 00:26:19,790 Now, 217 00:26:19,790 --> 00:26:30,800 this officially endorsed framework of meaning also enables the consolidation of a key narrative in the memory culture of Belfast loyalist communities. 218 00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:38,060 That the so called riots, so-called riots of August 1969 were instigated by the IRA, 219 00:26:38,060 --> 00:26:44,890 to which loyalist paramilitary groups were reactive and defensive. 220 00:26:44,890 --> 00:26:50,500 In fact, anticipatory fears of an impending Republican assault had been systematically 221 00:26:50,500 --> 00:26:57,460 provoked since April 1969 by the loyalist paramilitary Shankill Defence Association, 222 00:26:57,460 --> 00:27:05,470 the SDI that warned against imminent attacks from the Falls Road and used these unfounded rumours to canvass 223 00:27:05,470 --> 00:27:14,400 support for organisations set up to defend Protestant localities from these imagined Republican incursions. 224 00:27:14,400 --> 00:27:17,640 Sara Nelson, in her book, Ulster's Uncertain Defenders, 225 00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:26,340 identifies a widespread belief amongst Ulster Protestants that the riots were part of a coordinated attack by Catholics and Protestants, 226 00:27:26,340 --> 00:27:37,080 and describes this as one example of what she calls community myths about August 1969, echoing here the zero John Howard's diocese paper this morning. 227 00:27:37,080 --> 00:27:45,630 But according to Nelson, the existence of such myths points to the quite considerable difficulty experienced by most Protestants. 228 00:27:45,630 --> 00:27:54,630 In coming to terms with what Nelson calls the extralegal violence committed by loyalists and the police community, 229 00:27:54,630 --> 00:28:01,680 myths provided a common sense and unquestioned framework of local understanding for people in loyalist areas. 230 00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:07,980 Quote from Nelson, which kept their self-image intact as loyal and law abiding people. 231 00:28:07,980 --> 00:28:16,430 And to quote and enable them to make sense of the upheavals and the violence that was erupting around them. 232 00:28:16,430 --> 00:28:23,090 Community myths of the community coming under attack in 1969 and loyalist paramilitaries as defenders, 233 00:28:23,090 --> 00:28:29,930 rather than those primary aggressors were absorbed into local loyalist properly a popular memory. 234 00:28:29,930 --> 00:28:35,060 So if in the final section of the talk, briefly we turn to the oral histories. 235 00:28:35,060 --> 00:28:45,860 In due course, we can find Nelson's community myths surfacing in interviews with Protestants who were parents and children in 1969. 236 00:28:45,860 --> 00:28:51,020 Interviews that were collected by Dukas partner organisations in the Shankill. 237 00:28:51,020 --> 00:28:55,580 In the projects conducted between 2012 and 14. 238 00:28:55,580 --> 00:29:03,260 In these interviews, one strands of memory concerns the shock of seeing that the Catholics were getting put out of their houses. 239 00:29:03,260 --> 00:29:08,930 The houses were burning. People were taking their furniture out of their houses, houses on fire. 240 00:29:08,930 --> 00:29:15,260 But another strands of memory is of the fear. Quote when we were told the Catholics were coming to puts us out. 241 00:29:15,260 --> 00:29:20,660 That spurred some families to evacuate for a few days to other parts of the city. 242 00:29:20,660 --> 00:29:27,950 And in one interview, an individual remembers being in bed and the B specials wrapped at our door at about 6:30 243 00:29:27,950 --> 00:29:32,840 in the morning to tell us that the Catholics were coming from Ballymurphy to push us out. 244 00:29:32,840 --> 00:29:39,240 There were hundreds coming from Ballymurphy to put to put the Protestants out. 245 00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:44,310 Now, the imaginary character of this provoked fear of an IRA assault on the Shankill 246 00:29:44,310 --> 00:29:48,300 from nationalist Ballymurphy is clear from here in the borough's history. 247 00:29:48,300 --> 00:29:51,660 Ballymurphy in the Irish War. 248 00:29:51,660 --> 00:29:59,310 Ballymurphy is a nationalist housing estate further west on the interface, which had a reputation as a bad state with social problems. 249 00:29:59,310 --> 00:30:08,040 It was also fierce and also Republican. But on the 14th of the 15th of August 1969, the reality, according to the bureau, 250 00:30:08,040 --> 00:30:13,440 it was it was a community organiser working inside that community throughout the conflict, 251 00:30:13,440 --> 00:30:23,610 when barricades were erected around the Ballymurphy estate in protection against any attempted invasion from the neighbouring loyalist areas. 252 00:30:23,610 --> 00:30:30,930 Three shotguns were required for defence and these were sent running from barricades a barricade to make much of 253 00:30:30,930 --> 00:30:38,520 the display of the weapons so as to bluff their neighbours into believing Ballymurphy to be an armed fortress. 254 00:30:38,520 --> 00:30:47,940 Clearly, Ballymurphy was in no position to invade the Shankill, but nevertheless the structure of feeling crystallised in these groundless memories 255 00:30:47,940 --> 00:30:52,800 from the Shankill in 1969 of being under attack from the Catholics or under the 256 00:30:52,800 --> 00:30:57,240 threat of attack from the Catholics in Ballymurphy persists in a long emotional 257 00:30:57,240 --> 00:31:03,600 afterlife and underpins understandings over 40 years later in oral history interviews. 258 00:31:03,600 --> 00:31:06,360 But we, the Protestant people, were getting it really passed. 259 00:31:06,360 --> 00:31:11,810 The Catholics were doing the bombing and the shooting, and they were getting away with it. 260 00:31:11,810 --> 00:31:12,770 Now, in conclusion, 261 00:31:12,770 --> 00:31:21,770 then I just I'd like to point to the way the work of transforming relations and developing new historical dialogues across divisions at grassroots 262 00:31:21,770 --> 00:31:33,020 level is shaped and constrained by the reproduction of hegemonic narratives from conflict times which have embedded in local memory cultures. 263 00:31:33,020 --> 00:31:35,960 In Dukas, Shankill interviews memories of intimate, 264 00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:45,230 personal and familial responses to the outbreak of the war also carry narratives derived from state sponsored justifications 265 00:31:45,230 --> 00:31:54,080 and from locally formed community myths into the era of reconciliation and the shared future and comparable, 266 00:31:54,080 --> 00:31:59,750 though not identical, lacuna could also can also be traced in nationalist and Republican memories, 267 00:31:59,750 --> 00:32:04,460 perhaps especially about the devastating impacts of loyalist communities. 268 00:32:04,460 --> 00:32:11,630 When a resurgent IRA campaign did indeed begin in 1971 and began bombing pubs and 269 00:32:11,630 --> 00:32:17,630 other civilian targets in the Shankill grassroots and cross community memory work like 270 00:32:17,630 --> 00:32:23,030 that of the Dukas Oral History Archive faces the difficulty of negotiating the resulting 271 00:32:23,030 --> 00:32:29,270 imaginings denials and silences that necessarily enter into those conversations. 272 00:32:29,270 --> 00:32:38,360 But it promotes across the interface, and I want to end with a reflection that transformative moments of this local grassroots level 273 00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:42,980 transformative movements of this local grassroots level is bound up with the politics of 274 00:32:42,980 --> 00:32:50,000 winning necessary narrative shifts and acknowledgements by state and non-state actors within the 275 00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:56,540 wider public arena of legacy politics senses all matters of truth and justice at the moment. 276 00:32:56,540 --> 00:33:03,890 The prospects for this in relation to the Northern Ireland war are not good, but on the other hand, they are not without hope. 277 00:33:03,890 --> 00:33:08,420 Thank you very much for listening. Thank you. 278 00:33:08,420 --> 00:33:12,410 And now, last but not least, we have our very own shop steward, Alexander, 279 00:33:12,410 --> 00:33:17,150 professor of Commonwealth Studies at the Department of International Development. 280 00:33:17,150 --> 00:33:25,880 Jocelyn works on social and political history in southern Africa and is particularly interested in liberation struggles and their legacies. 281 00:33:25,880 --> 00:33:34,790 She co-authored the book Violence and Memory and is the author of The Unsettled Land, The Politics of Land and State Making in Zimbabwe. 282 00:33:34,790 --> 00:33:42,020 And today, Jocelyn will talk about the memory of violent repression in Zimbabwe. 283 00:33:42,020 --> 00:33:46,250 Thank you very much. Right. Hi, everyone. 284 00:33:46,250 --> 00:33:50,570 I'm going to be very unfashionable and not have a PowerPoint presentation, 285 00:33:50,570 --> 00:33:56,210 so I apologise because you're going to have to just look at my face to the whole thing, right? 286 00:33:56,210 --> 00:34:05,030 I want to start just by thanking Jessie, Johanna and Catherine as well for starting the organisation of this day when we lived in a in a different 287 00:34:05,030 --> 00:34:12,230 world and keeping it going in this much altered one really well done that can't have been easy. 288 00:34:12,230 --> 00:34:16,370 So my presentation focuses on local memory making process as an actor. 289 00:34:16,370 --> 00:34:24,410 Actors in Matabeleland Zimbabwe focussing on state violence in the years after independence in 1980. 290 00:34:24,410 --> 00:34:27,500 I've written about this history of violence for many years, 291 00:34:27,500 --> 00:34:36,860 but my interest was recently piqued anew owing to a boom in what we might call pneumonic activity that sat alongside a widespread, 292 00:34:36,860 --> 00:34:40,040 widespread claim that this history was silenced. 293 00:34:40,040 --> 00:34:49,160 So this seeming paradox of what I'm calling noisy silence that I want to explore, I'm going to start with a few words about the 80s violence. 294 00:34:49,160 --> 00:34:58,250 I think probably not everyone is familiar with it. OK, so this period of violent repression is known as Gukurahundi, 295 00:34:58,250 --> 00:35:04,100 and it took place immediately after independence following a lengthy armed liberation struggle. 296 00:35:04,100 --> 00:35:10,830 It was rooted in the unresolved tensions of that struggle, in which not one but two nationalist movements had fought. 297 00:35:10,830 --> 00:35:16,890 The victor in 1980 was NPF, the party that ruled Zimbabwe up to today, 298 00:35:16,890 --> 00:35:23,380 Zanu-PF used the country as the new country's security forces to target its nationalist counterpart, 299 00:35:23,380 --> 00:35:27,720 Zuku, with the intent of eliminating it as a political rival. 300 00:35:27,720 --> 00:35:38,280 And in that aim, it succeeded. In 1987, Zaha, who was absorbed into the NPF under the so-called unity accord and ceased to exist. 301 00:35:38,280 --> 00:35:46,860 The Zanu-PF government's violent repression focussed on the western regions of the country, notably in Matabeleland, where Zapu was strongest. 302 00:35:46,860 --> 00:35:53,340 It was carried out by state agents, most egregiously, the newly formed fifth brigade of the National Army. 303 00:35:53,340 --> 00:35:56,520 The official narrative of Gukurahundi, at its simplest, 304 00:35:56,520 --> 00:36:06,280 is that government forces were hunting dissidents from Zappos armed wing who were along with their leaders seeking to overthrow the new government. 305 00:36:06,280 --> 00:36:13,750 But this story can't explain the nature of the violence in which an estimated 10000 civilians were killed and thousands more were detained, 306 00:36:13,750 --> 00:36:20,230 tortured, starved and disappeared by the intelligence services, police and paramilitaries. 307 00:36:20,230 --> 00:36:25,600 The target constituted by Zapu and its armed wing was also rapidly blurred in political discourse 308 00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:31,480 and practise to include all members of the minority ethnic group that inhabited this region. 309 00:36:31,480 --> 00:36:37,530 The underbelly and the majority of the biggest group in Zimbabwe is the Shona. 310 00:36:37,530 --> 00:36:43,260 So this had the effect of giving Gukurahundi a cultural, cultural, historical and linguistic weight. 311 00:36:43,260 --> 00:36:48,840 And one of its legacies was the making of a very politicised in the Valley identity. 312 00:36:48,840 --> 00:36:51,840 I think I should just stay right at the beginning really clearly that this the 313 00:36:51,840 --> 00:36:59,400 official narrative of Gukurahundi is has never been hegemonic in this region. 314 00:36:59,400 --> 00:37:02,980 This region has had many of its own stories and you can say their stories, 315 00:37:02,980 --> 00:37:10,990 though the contradictory and disputed have always been hegemonic and the local has always been hidden amongst. 316 00:37:10,990 --> 00:37:19,950 OK, so that's a few sentences on Gukurahundi as an event. I mean, I turn to the kind of local noise around it in recent years. 317 00:37:19,950 --> 00:37:24,930 So more than three decades after the signing of the unity accord and the end of violence, 318 00:37:24,930 --> 00:37:30,060 a conviction that this violent history is silenced pervades the Matabeleland provinces. 319 00:37:30,060 --> 00:37:35,070 So the claim of silence comes from young political activists, journalists and the independent media. 320 00:37:35,070 --> 00:37:40,990 Civic leaders based in the region's capital city Bulawayo, rural traditional leaders, 321 00:37:40,990 --> 00:37:47,280 members of a large diaspora and a great number of people on social media, of course. 322 00:37:47,280 --> 00:37:54,120 So it would be foolish to suggest that acts of silencing don't have a very real element to them. 323 00:37:54,120 --> 00:37:58,020 Fear has always been attached to speaking out about Gukurahundi. 324 00:37:58,020 --> 00:38:04,110 Many of those who have done so have suffered violence, threats and serious prosecution in courts. 325 00:38:04,110 --> 00:38:12,900 There's nonetheless an unstable space in which noise can be made, and it has grown and changed in two recent moments of transition. 326 00:38:12,900 --> 00:38:22,590 One short lived unity government that incorporated a new opposition movement alongside the NPF between 2009 and 2013, 327 00:38:22,590 --> 00:38:28,560 and the second following the political rupture created by the November 2017 coup. 328 00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:35,850 So that coup brought down Xenopus iconic leader Robert Mugabe, the man who had directed Gukurahundi. 329 00:38:35,850 --> 00:38:42,720 He was, however, replaced by his erstwhile henchmen of that and later periods Emmerson Mnangagwa. 330 00:38:42,720 --> 00:38:48,810 So from Matabeleland, this was an ambiguous transition because it left the Gukurahundi perpetrators in power. 331 00:38:48,810 --> 00:38:56,320 Nonetheless, the widely touted promise of a new dispensation provoked an outpouring of Gukurahundi talk. 332 00:38:56,320 --> 00:39:04,090 So this outpouring has taken many forms, in part because there's never been any kind of formal redress. 333 00:39:04,090 --> 00:39:11,470 So the frames of law or reconciliation or truth are not dominant, though they are pervasive. 334 00:39:11,470 --> 00:39:19,370 There's no single current counter-narrative, but at least the telling of stories across a variety of genres and media. 335 00:39:19,370 --> 00:39:28,740 So these treatments of Gukurahundi appeared in Zimbabwean authored novels and in plays, some staged in Zimbabwe, others in South Africa in history, 336 00:39:28,740 --> 00:39:35,540 some of them biographies written and published in Bulawayo and in substantial new academic studies, 337 00:39:35,540 --> 00:39:46,340 alibis involving academics often based again in South Africa. They appeared in contested memorial making processes and in paintings. 338 00:39:46,340 --> 00:39:54,200 The artist owned Mexico held a major exhibition of paintings depicting the violence of the grindy at the Blue Whale National Gallery in 2010. 339 00:39:54,200 --> 00:40:03,350 And that's a state institution, though was rapidly shut down in Mexico was taken to court on public order charges. 340 00:40:03,350 --> 00:40:12,770 Two major documentaries by the blue whale based journalist and filmmakers, MS and Novella also appeared one in 2008 and one in 2018. 341 00:40:12,770 --> 00:40:21,320 Both brought harassment and threats, but both were publicly screened in Bulawayo, and Derbali has also established a Gukurahundi library. 342 00:40:21,320 --> 00:40:25,160 The second was actually establishing a Gukurahundi theme park. 343 00:40:25,160 --> 00:40:31,930 And there are many kind of there's a kind of big video collection of accounts of Gukurahundi survivors. 344 00:40:31,930 --> 00:40:39,130 So the showing of his 2018 film was in part, made possible by the attendance at its launch with members of the post-coup institution, 345 00:40:39,130 --> 00:40:47,500 the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission and PRC. This was Zimbabwe's first attempt at something like a truth commission. 346 00:40:47,500 --> 00:40:54,430 The DNPR sees independence is deeply compromised and it has been controversial in Matabeleland, 347 00:40:54,430 --> 00:41:03,930 but it has acted as a kind of new vector for public debate and action, including the exhumation of a handful of mass graves from the 80s. 348 00:41:03,930 --> 00:41:12,450 The NPCI has also held meetings in Matabeleland that attracted protest, notably from the young men of the Markazi Republic Party, 349 00:41:12,450 --> 00:41:17,290 a separatist political organisation that has put Gukurahundi at its centre. 350 00:41:17,290 --> 00:41:22,510 The party derailed meetings by dancing, singing and waving banners calling for justice, 351 00:41:22,510 --> 00:41:29,280 denouncing President Mnangagwa and condemning the Shona speaking and our NPC commissioners. 352 00:41:29,280 --> 00:41:36,180 The history of Google. Google was also raised again and again in the context of semi-public and public events from the funerals of 353 00:41:36,180 --> 00:41:43,230 Sappho luminaries to the remaking of the public holiday that marks the unity accord as Google Hindi Day, 354 00:41:43,230 --> 00:41:50,540 complete with marches, songs and banners adorned with the faces and stories of victims in central well. 355 00:41:50,540 --> 00:41:57,950 So all the media attention as well. 356 00:41:57,950 --> 00:42:03,440 That's the kind of sense of the noise. So where does the sense of silence come from? 357 00:42:03,440 --> 00:42:09,680 So I draw on the idea of recognition to explain the experience of silence amidst noise. 358 00:42:09,680 --> 00:42:16,850 Silence doesn't mean a failure to tell or to know the failure on the part of particular audiences to engage and to hear. 359 00:42:16,850 --> 00:42:21,510 Most importantly, in this case, perpetrators who are still in power. 360 00:42:21,510 --> 00:42:26,970 So this specific failure of recognition has not meant that there is no record recognition at all, 361 00:42:26,970 --> 00:42:37,480 but rather that it's circumscribed in ways that have consequences, both for what we might call communities of hearing and for strategies of telling. 362 00:42:37,480 --> 00:42:44,680 So theme, running through much of the literature on the legacies of violent pasts to simplify hugely is that 363 00:42:44,680 --> 00:42:50,260 acts of silence create buried memories that are corrosive of political and social relations. 364 00:42:50,260 --> 00:42:55,540 While truth telling and the act of sharing stories is restorative and healing. 365 00:42:55,540 --> 00:43:05,290 So this telling and sharing returns agency humanity to individuals by spanning the private and public spheres and affirming collective ideals. 366 00:43:05,290 --> 00:43:16,150 And as this movement has been, Gloucester's as recognition, though as is widely noted again, there are many obstacles to this act of recognition. 367 00:43:16,150 --> 00:43:25,330 In brief, stories of violence may fail to achieve recognition by remaining untold, unheard and believed or unsayable. 368 00:43:25,330 --> 00:43:30,610 Work on soldiers or on victims of sexual violence, for example, have explored these outcomes, 369 00:43:30,610 --> 00:43:38,400 as have studies of truth commissions that identified the constraints put on the stories that can be told within them. 370 00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:43,950 So if two truth commissions can themselves silence and leave narratives unheard. 371 00:43:43,950 --> 00:43:48,530 What happens to recognition where perpetrators are still in power? 372 00:43:48,530 --> 00:43:53,390 So one outcome is that people and groups explore an awkward middle ground between 373 00:43:53,390 --> 00:43:58,910 private and public seeking recognition from authorities and collectives, 374 00:43:58,910 --> 00:44:06,560 communities of hearing. Short of the state and these have different purposes and different effects. 375 00:44:06,560 --> 00:44:16,040 So Exhumations have come to play a complex role in creating substantial local forms of recognition that do not seek to engage perpetrators. 376 00:44:16,040 --> 00:44:26,350 So one of the post-coup exhumations involved reburial of a man called Julius and Lovell, who was tortured and shot by the fifth brigade in 1983. 377 00:44:26,350 --> 00:44:33,460 They brought together his extended family, some of whom had not seen each other since the day of his murder. 378 00:44:33,460 --> 00:44:43,950 Along with a range of church and community leaders. The exhumation and funeral involved telling of Julia's life and of his death through testimony, 379 00:44:43,950 --> 00:44:50,550 social ritual and forensic science, which acted to remake the bonds and memories across this family. 380 00:44:50,550 --> 00:44:59,810 In a newly noisy form. The perpetrators, as falsify errors and deniers, were not entirely absent, however, 381 00:44:59,810 --> 00:45:05,700 the cause of death on Julius State issued death certificate was listed as headache. 382 00:45:05,700 --> 00:45:12,420 The family fought and failed to have it changed, their sensitive story is still truncated. 383 00:45:12,420 --> 00:45:18,060 It's palpable, as is their alienation as citizens. 384 00:45:18,060 --> 00:45:22,260 The desire to document in order to challenge state denial lies behind the work 385 00:45:22,260 --> 00:45:27,960 of the document documentary maker Zenzele and the values I mentioned just now. 386 00:45:27,960 --> 00:45:37,850 His work collects evidence largely through witness testimony, and it also deliberately seeks a reaction from the state through public performance. 387 00:45:37,850 --> 00:45:44,960 So his community of hearing includes the victims of Gukurahundi, but his strategy of telling is aimed at the perpetrators. 388 00:45:44,960 --> 00:45:51,650 And this has shaped how he has told his story first and foremost as a string of extreme atrocities. 389 00:45:51,650 --> 00:45:54,830 The number of which is increased in each telling. 390 00:45:54,830 --> 00:46:03,230 And secondarily, as a political history of the betrayal of one nationalist movement by another senator. 391 00:46:03,230 --> 00:46:09,170 A younger generation who did not themselves experienced the violence of the eighties have told Gukurahundi stories in 392 00:46:09,170 --> 00:46:16,770 yet another form and protest and social media and here I have to say I enjoyed very much the Charles's paper on it. 393 00:46:16,770 --> 00:46:26,210 I'm probably getting your name wrong now, but the paper on Lebanon around youth, and this is another kind of case of intergenerational activity. 394 00:46:26,210 --> 00:46:32,870 So I'm drawing here on the work of Lena Rowan on the angry, youthful members of the Americas, the Republic Party. 395 00:46:32,870 --> 00:46:37,100 And she argues that this generation didn't learn about the past through unvarying the 396 00:46:37,100 --> 00:46:42,230 memories of their parents that produced their own version to make sense of the present. 397 00:46:42,230 --> 00:46:50,360 This was shaped as a reaction to official narratives of Good Hendi and to their experience of extreme economic and political marginalisation. 398 00:46:50,360 --> 00:46:55,460 The past they unburied put to the side the story of the crushing of zappers in favour of 399 00:46:55,460 --> 00:47:02,000 Gukurahundi as an ethnic genocide perpetrated by the majority Shona against the underbelly. 400 00:47:02,000 --> 00:47:10,370 So in this county, 80 in this account in the 80s, violence was simply one step in an ongoing effort to destroy the underbelly shown us as a collective 401 00:47:10,370 --> 00:47:16,070 were cast as both the perpetrators of the eighties and the beneficiaries of the present. 402 00:47:16,070 --> 00:47:20,630 The political endpoint of the intricacies story is a rejection of the nation of 403 00:47:20,630 --> 00:47:26,760 Zimbabwe in favour of an idealised version of a pre-colonial and developing state. 404 00:47:26,760 --> 00:47:36,000 OK, I'm concluding now in the grey area between public and private, where recognition can only be partially given. 405 00:47:36,000 --> 00:47:37,740 It still matters, 406 00:47:37,740 --> 00:47:45,600 and it still plays a central role in making memories that do not belong to the perpetrator state and that can bring together communities of hearing, 407 00:47:45,600 --> 00:47:48,680 if not necessarily of healing. 408 00:47:48,680 --> 00:47:58,520 The incomplete recognition on offer can also produce an alienating politics on one hand and a divisive, hyper hyperbolic politics on the other. 409 00:47:58,520 --> 00:48:07,160 Both of which create profound obstacles to mutual recognition across a host of different lines generational, political and ethnic. 410 00:48:07,160 --> 00:48:11,100 Thank you. Thank you very much. 411 00:48:11,100 --> 00:48:16,800 I really like this image better sound of noisy silence that you provided us with, 412 00:48:16,800 --> 00:48:25,650 I think it captures really well the paradoxes that surround traumatic memory in all different post-conflict scenarios. 413 00:48:25,650 --> 00:48:32,100 You know, I've created some questions. First, I will start with Graham. 414 00:48:32,100 --> 00:48:40,050 So Graham just not asks you, can you tell us something about the contestation of hegemonic memory from within 415 00:48:40,050 --> 00:48:45,360 the loyalist camp or to counter memory narratives only come from the nationalists? 416 00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:59,110 And then connected to this is also a question have these narratives travelled or migrated south of the border or across the Irish Sea? 417 00:48:59,110 --> 00:49:05,110 Thank you for these questions. I've tried to refer to answer them in the chatter, in the question and answer actually, 418 00:49:05,110 --> 00:49:11,900 rather than thinking that was the thing we were, we were doing here rather than paying full attention to it. 419 00:49:11,900 --> 00:49:22,150 Jocelyn spoke about. But thanks for the question. Yes, and you're right, there is no homogenous unity to loyalist popular memory. 420 00:49:22,150 --> 00:49:29,170 So I've really emphasised the Connexions running through in my paper to try and draw out 421 00:49:29,170 --> 00:49:36,070 the ways in which hegemonic narratives become embedded within oral history interviews. 422 00:49:36,070 --> 00:49:47,500 But within the Dukas archive, you'd find many, many examples of much more, you know, a much wider range of memories, 423 00:49:47,500 --> 00:50:03,310 a much wider range of of nuanced responses to the history and the sense of how the diversity 424 00:50:03,310 --> 00:50:13,150 and complexity of those grassroots memories play out and and and and become visible, 425 00:50:13,150 --> 00:50:16,930 I think is one of the things that's really interesting for the project. 426 00:50:16,930 --> 00:50:27,100 For four, for Dukakis, how to get underneath as it were the some of the big public political collective memories that are still being articulated. 427 00:50:27,100 --> 00:50:33,790 And you know, we saw John putting up some of the murals, for example, you know, in his talk this morning. 428 00:50:33,790 --> 00:50:37,390 But how to get underneath that to the complexity of the range? 429 00:50:37,390 --> 00:50:45,970 And I think that where we're at a very early stage of being able to understand and give voice to that to that range, 430 00:50:45,970 --> 00:50:55,540 it consultation certainly has focussed on the role of loyalist paramilitaries and also actually on the role of the British Army. 431 00:50:55,540 --> 00:51:03,910 But many Protestant unionist loyalists never supported and hostile to loyalist paramilitary action, 432 00:51:03,910 --> 00:51:14,860 but wanted to affirm this narrative of law and order. And it's a very powerful, I'd say, and very deeply rooted narrative that wants to, wants to, 433 00:51:14,860 --> 00:51:20,560 wants to emphasise the sense of the difference between the forces of law and order, 434 00:51:20,560 --> 00:51:27,610 you know, legitimate violence versus the illegitimate terrorist violence of the other. 435 00:51:27,610 --> 00:51:34,120 And I think the other thing I'd say about the Shankill would be that the there is also a kind of bringing together across this. 436 00:51:34,120 --> 00:51:43,990 This range of differences, a tendency to crystallise around the the the victimhood of the community, 437 00:51:43,990 --> 00:51:51,700 the suffering and the pain of the community at the hands of the real violence committed by the IRA after 1971. 438 00:51:51,700 --> 00:51:56,350 So that would be, I hope that answers partly the question. 439 00:51:56,350 --> 00:51:59,950 I say partly that they had a unique memory remains in place, 440 00:51:59,950 --> 00:52:08,560 but it's it's it's fractured and it's under the peace process and the narrative of reconciliation. 441 00:52:08,560 --> 00:52:17,030 It's opened up to a whole range of of nuances and inflexions that we need to understand more about. 442 00:52:17,030 --> 00:52:21,650 We have one more question to address. 443 00:52:21,650 --> 00:52:26,210 Although I think it might also be interesting for you, Charleson. 444 00:52:26,210 --> 00:52:34,100 So the question is why did this dualism between Brazilians and colonisers appear in Brazilian 445 00:52:34,100 --> 00:52:39,530 identity construction rather than in other dominant colonial settler identities like in South Africa, 446 00:52:39,530 --> 00:52:49,130 Kenya, Zimbabwe, where intergenerational identity was constructed as Europeans in Africa? 447 00:52:49,130 --> 00:52:55,640 Yeah, I really like that question. And let's say what was the case in Jocelyn's study? 448 00:52:55,640 --> 00:53:04,040 But in Brazil, it was very important to like Brazil created this racial democracy where because it 449 00:53:04,040 --> 00:53:11,750 had so many subgroups of mixed Brazilian born Europeans that were living in Brazil, 450 00:53:11,750 --> 00:53:18,980 all the variety of indigenous groups with their many languages and cultures and of course, 451 00:53:18,980 --> 00:53:28,880 the the former slaves that were brought to Brazil and there had also their their many cultures and languages and so on. 452 00:53:28,880 --> 00:53:35,840 So Brazil decide to play all that down and create a sense of Brazilians which value the mixture. 453 00:53:35,840 --> 00:53:40,580 It wasn't good to be European or black or indigenous. 454 00:53:40,580 --> 00:53:45,140 It was like as if the best was the best of all these worlds together. 455 00:53:45,140 --> 00:53:53,760 And that may been Brazilian goods. In Brazil, there was this sense of mixture and that were was called the racial democracy that Brazil is famous for. 456 00:53:53,760 --> 00:54:07,400 Obviously, they're denied a discussion about about slavery, about violence perpetrated and suffered by these groups, as well as indigenous groups. 457 00:54:07,400 --> 00:54:14,990 We created this sense of of what it is to be Brazilian and then to enhance that. 458 00:54:14,990 --> 00:54:21,680 It was also this what is known Brazilian, and there was usually this European coloniser. 459 00:54:21,680 --> 00:54:37,340 So that is what happened in in an independent Brazil, especially Republican Brazil, around in the thirties, 1930s. 460 00:54:37,340 --> 00:54:44,390 Schlesinger, you want to add something. I see that another question is come in. 461 00:54:44,390 --> 00:54:48,950 That's about Gukurahundi. Yeah. Would you like to answer that? 462 00:54:48,950 --> 00:54:55,580 I know you're a completely out of time again, so maybe I'll just jump on that while it's there for a minute, so. 463 00:54:55,580 --> 00:55:01,370 Go for it. Oh, OK. So the question is about. 464 00:55:01,370 --> 00:55:10,550 During the 2008 election in Zimbabwe. And what's happening now, which is another round of fairly repressive politics? 465 00:55:10,550 --> 00:55:17,280 Would you say there's been and there is another silent Gukurahundi going on at the moment? 466 00:55:17,280 --> 00:55:23,700 So I mean, I think that has to be that's a question you cannot answer globally about Zimbabwe. 467 00:55:23,700 --> 00:55:28,830 If you're standing in Bulawayo, you would answer that question. One way for standing in Harare, you would answer it another way. 468 00:55:28,830 --> 00:55:35,820 And that's partly my point is that if we're talking about hegemonic narratives here, they're very different in different parts of Zimbabwe. 469 00:55:35,820 --> 00:55:45,900 There's no single narrative about Burundi. So the narrative about Gukurahundi being repeated today in Bulawayo, which is pervasive, 470 00:55:45,900 --> 00:55:51,930 is about Shona colonising that part of that country and exploiting and double-D speakers, 471 00:55:51,930 --> 00:56:01,260 taking their jobs, taking over their businesses, you know, running the city council, taking over positions of schoolteachers in the civil service. 472 00:56:01,260 --> 00:56:08,070 That range of complaints, whereas in Harare, Gukurahundi being reproduced now is also a narrative. 473 00:56:08,070 --> 00:56:13,140 But it's about how the techniques of violence used in the 1980s and the perpetrators 474 00:56:13,140 --> 00:56:18,810 of violence of the 1980s are continuing to orchestrate repression today. 475 00:56:18,810 --> 00:56:23,310 And that's also a common line of argument. 476 00:56:23,310 --> 00:56:26,250 But it's not the same one as the one in the way. 477 00:56:26,250 --> 00:56:34,500 So I think that that is politically significant, that those are so distinctive as to views on what Gukurahundi is today. 478 00:56:34,500 --> 00:56:47,230 But obviously, I take very much take your point that there are parallels in the forms of repression across the 40 years of Zimbabwean independence. 479 00:56:47,230 --> 00:56:59,242 All right, and thank you very much. Three fascinating presentations, and now I am handing back over to Chelsea and to another keynote speech.