Related Papers
2016. Multisemic Speech Genres as Vehicles for Re-Inscribing Meaning in Post-Conflict Societies: A Mozambican Case, in Vigdis Broch-Due and Bjørn Enge Bertelsen (eds.) "Violent Reverberations. Global Modalities of Trauma." New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 193-217.
2016 •
Bjorn Enge Bertelsen
Long-term critiques, especially from anthropology, of the effects of the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) category has raised awareness of trauma’s bodily, ritual, cultural or collective aspects of violence. Although acknowledging this critique, in this paper it is argued that such alternative foci are unhelpful if eclipsing crucial oral practices. Specifically, I re-emphasise the importance of the spoken in post-conflict settings such as that following the Mozambican civil war (1976-1992) where the ongoing formation of competing accounts are analyzed as constituting Bakhtinian speech genres that address and deliberate on lingering violence. Two points are stressed: Firstly, such speech genres, I argue, is central to not only collectively addressing past sufferings but also to engage in redressing bellicose violence through re-inscribing the domain of meaning. Secondly, an analysis of these speech genres further reveals them to constitute formative and crucial events opening up to what Allen Feldman calls ‘the social being of narrative truth’ more generally.
2016. Violent Becomings: State Formation, Sociality, and Power in Mozambique (OPEN ACCESS-FULL BOOK)
Bjorn Enge Bertelsen
Violent Becomings conceptualizes the Mozambican state not as the bureaucratically ordered polity of the nation-state, but as a continuously emergent and violently challenged mode of ordering. In doing so, this book addresses the question of why colonial and postcolonial state formation has involved violent articulations with so-called ‘traditional’ forms of sociality. The scope and dynamic nature of such violent becomings is explored through an array of contexts that include colonial regimes of forced labor and pacification, liberation war struggles and civil war, the social engineering of the post-independence state, and the popular appropriation of sovereign violence in riots and lynchings.
Afterlives: Humanitarian Histories and Critical Subjects in Mozambique
Ramah McKay
This article draws from fieldwork conducted with the staff, volunteers and recipients of programs run by NGOs in Morrumbala, a rural district in central Mozambique. During the Mozambican conflict in the 1980s and early 1990s, a majority of district residents lived in refugee camps in Malawi. This article explores how recipients and volunteers draw on nostalgic memories of humanitarian experience in Malawi to critique and make claims on the humanitarian regimes that now provide services in Morrumbala. Anthropological literature has shown that refugee experience can be central to processes of political subjectification, becoming the grounds through which claims are articulated on neoliberal regimes of rights and services. These memories, and the nostalgic humanitarian lexicon they deploy, point to the historicity of humanitarian experience. As Morrumbala residents engage new configurations of aid and welfare today, the afterlives of previous interventions also allow for ambivalent and critical engagements with humanitarian practice in the present.
End of the War Machinery: Demobilization in Mozambique
End of the War Machinery: Demobilization in Mozambique
1995 •
Henri Valot
English - 19 pages. Henri Valot is a French national born in 1966. A former Protection Officer, he is now pursuing a doctoral degree in political philosophy concerning the question of violence at Paris X University. A UN Volunteer District Electoral Supervisor in Cambodia, he later served as a UN Volunteer Technical Unit Camp Officer with the United Nations Operation in Mozambique from November 1994 to March 1995. He is presently working as a Press Officer at the UN General Assembly.
2018 [with Knut Rio]. "1968 and its other worlds: Global events and (anti-)state dynamics in France, Mozambique and Vanuatu". History and Anthropology. DOI 10.1080/02757206.2018.1524759. OPEN ACCESS
Bjorn Enge Bertelsen
This article de-centres the moment, event and impact of 1968 and expands it temporally and spatially. Taking a longue durée approach charting a trajectory from the 1960s into the 1980s, we analyse statist and anti-statist dynamics through a comparison of the May 1968 Paris riots with the Nagriamel movement in Vanuatu and the phenomenon of Naparama in Mozambique. Such a horizontal triangulation and spatio-temporal expansion is undertaken to contribute to a more global understanding of what we term ‘the 1968 event’ entails. However, this comparative analysis also underlines how its impact should be measured as, first, an experimentation with and attack on political reality, second, how the intricate connections between Euro-American and other worlds were integral to its articulation and, third, how paradoxically 1968 and its response spawned the rise of an authoritarian form of nation-state – eclipsing the openings in the firmament of the political, social and the real afforded by the original event.
History and Anthropology
1968 and its other worlds: Global events and (anti-)state dynamics in France, Mozambique and Vanuatu
2018 •
Knut Rio, Bjorn Enge Bertelsen
This article de-centres the moment, event and impact of 1968 and expands it temporally and spatially. Taking a longue durée approach charting a trajectory from the 1960s into the 1980s, we analyse statist and anti-statist dynamics through a comparison of the May 1968 Paris riots with the Nagriamel movement in Vanuatu and the phenomenon of Naparama in Mozambique. Such a horizontal triangulation and spatio-temporal expansion is undertaken to contribute to a more global understanding of what we term ‘the 1968 event’ entails. However, this comparative analysis also underlines how its impact should be measured as, first, an experimentation with and attack on political reality, second, how the intricate connections between Euro-American and other worlds were integral to its articulation and, third, how paradoxically 1968 and its response spawned the rise of an authoritarian form of nation-state – eclipsing the openings in the firmament of the political, social and the real afforded by the original event.
The Liberation Script in Mozambican History
Paolo Israel
Introduction, Cover and table of contents of the edited volume, The Liberation Script in Mozambican History, Kronos, 39 (2013), with Rui Assubuji and Drew Thompson
‘It Will Be Our Time To Eat’: Former Renamo Combatants and Big-Man Dynamics in Central Mozambique
Nikkie Wiegink
This article aims to contribute to the debate about the recent remobilisation of Resistência Nacional Moçambicano (Renamo), by presenting an analysis of its low- and mid-ranked veterans' post-war relationships with fellow veterans and with the Renamo leadership. It argues that former Renamo combatants' participation in post-war Renamo networks has been central for their re-integration into Mozambican politics but, at the same time, may be regarded as a source of frustration and political discontent. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Maringue, central Mozambique, the article shows that, in scholarship on armed groups, these relationships are characterised by dependency, loyalty and expectations, often referred to as ‘big-man dynamics’. The article engages critically with this concept, showing how Renamo veterans' position vis-à-vis the Renamo leadership is largely characterised by ‘waiting’. It demonstrates that Renamo veterans regard the Renamo party and the state as ‘exclusive caretakers’, which are expected to take care of the ex-combatants. However, Renamo's leaders have largely failed to meet their followers' expectations, resulting in frustration, several (though rare) cases of ‘defection’ to other political parties, but more generally a status of ‘waithood’. This analysis provides a critical exploration of the post-war dynamics of former armed groups, and sheds some light on Renamo's recent remobilisation from the perspective of the former Renamo combatants.
Mozambique on the Move. Challenges and Reflections (co-edited with Sheila Pereira Khan and Bjorn Enge Bertelsen)
2019 •
Maria Paula Meneses, Bjorn Enge Bertelsen
Being a first of its kind, this volume comprises a multi-disciplinary exploration of Mozambique’s contemporary and historical dynamics, bringing together scholars from across the globe. Focusing on the country’s vibrant cultural, political, economic and social world – including the transition from the colonial to the postcolonial era – the book argues that Mozambique is a country still emergent, still unfolding, still on the move. Drawing on the disciplines of history, literature studies, anthropology, political science, economy and art history, the book serves not only as a generous introduction to Mozambique but also as a case study of a southern African country.
Ambitions of Cinema: Revolution, Event, Screen
2008 •
Ros Gray
In this thesis, the theoretical implications of the African Revolution for the entanglements of postcolonial urban space are explored through examination of radical cinematic inventions. It tracks points where the cinema screen became a site of radical gathering and ambitions of cinema emerged that expressed a revolutionary desire. The thesis maps out a relational geography between different late liberation struggles of the 1970s and 1980s, a relational geography that is produced by cinema in the networks of connections lived out and constructed through radical drives. The exploration of aesthetics of liberation is the point of departure to investigate how screens, as urban surfaces of projection and reflection, appearance and masking, emerge from the world and have material and psychical effects in the world. In the entanglements of cinema with radical politics, the memory of Revolution, after the event, re-emerges in unexpected forms and figures, which prompt a re-thinking of the ...
