Revolution, Counter-Revolution and Revisionism in Postcolonial Africa

Download or read book Revolution, Counter-Revolution and Revisionism in Postcolonial Africa written by Alice Dinerman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-09-27 with total page 793 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking study investigates defining themes in the field of social memory studies as they bear on the politics of post-Cold-War, post-apartheid Southern Africa. Alice Dinerman offers a detailed chronicle of the Mozambican government’s attempts to revise the country's troubled postcolonial past with a view to negotiating the political challenges posed by the present. In doing so, she lays bare the path-dependence of memory practices, while tracing their divergent trajectories, shifting meanings and varied combinations within ruling discourse and performance. Central themes include: the interplay between past and present the dialectic between remembering and forgetting the dynamics between popular and official memory discourses the politics of acknowledgement. Dinerman’s original analysis is essential reading for students of modern Africa, the sociology of memory, Third World politics and post-conflict societies.