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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Fathers and children of Ivorian independence: metaphors of kinship and generation in the making of a national time
Author:N'Guessan, Konstanze
Year:2015
Periodical:Africa: Journal of the International African Institute (ISSN 0001-9720)
Volume:85
Issue:2
Pages:289-311
Language:English
Geographic term:Ivory Coast - Côte d'Ivoire
Subjects:youth
generations
images
group identity
politics
External link:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972015000030
Abstract:The author looks at the image of a generation of youth in Côte d'Ivoire as the vanguard force of an ongoing struggle for independence and a new nation on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of independence. Drawing upon the theoretical framework of Reinhart Koselleck, she explores the making of national time as layered temporality, with generations not succeeding each other but rather coexisting. Her analysis of expressions and performances of 'doing being youth' helps in understanding how the label 'youth' is used to mark membership in or exclusion from a collective. She examines the process of how 'youth' is made into a meaningful marker and how and why political actors engage in performances of 'being youth'. She embeds this analysis in a genealogy of the nation as a metaphoric kin group and examines the ways in which Ivorians belong to and actively create 'generations', referring to independence as a lieu de mémoire. The paper explores the cultural expressions of contemporary Ivorian politics and analyses performances of the past in the present and the positions young people may take or are given in the nation's past, present and future. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French [Journal abstract]
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