Ugandan Youth and Creative Writing: New Perspectives on Conflict and Development

自1962年独立以来，乌干达一直受到一系列冲突的困扰。从南苏丹和刚果民主共和国的跨境“溢出”冲突到科尼圣主抵抗军领导的备受瞩目的南北冲突，这些暴力和恐怖事件成为乌干达后殖民历史的特征。现存的发展研究表明，在殖民时期形成的根深蒂固的种族竞争、不平衡的经济发展、治理中的腐败和资源分配不对称之间存在联系，这些都是该国冲突的主要驱动因素（Otunnu，“阿基利兰战争的原因和后果”；ACCS，“乌干达北部冲突分析”）。虽然冲突的主要冲击是由北部承担的，但整个乌干达都受到其影响的困扰。无论是在冲突中引人注目的招募儿童的案件中，包括对年轻妇女和女孩的性贩运，还是在整个国家失业、不稳定和政治冲突的总体影响中，年轻人都变得特别脆弱。虽然在乌干达的情况下进行了一些高级别研究、发展分析和政策建议，但总的来说，这些研究、发展分析和政策建议都未能避免与发展话语有关的陷阱，特别是与非洲大陆有关的陷阱，其结果是剥夺了当地人民的权力，使冲突及其后果的日常经历失去了中心。正如詹姆斯·弗格森（James Ferguson，《全球阴影》）所言，围绕发展的修辞和话语装置不能与它的物质效果脱钩，而且在实践中往往是无效的（另见埃斯科瓦尔，《遭遇发展》）。这些抱怨在非洲发展的后殖民方法中已经变得司空见惯，在那里，非洲人口的生活经验与关于他们的话语理论之间的距离被认为是殖民主义剥削模式的延续（例如乔利，“全球发展目标：联合国经验”）。拟议的研究是一项试点研究，旨在通过发展跨学科方法来纠正这些缺陷，使人们能够对冲突、其遗产及其在青年群体中的影响有新的理解，并将创造性写作作为自我表达和赋权的工具。拟议的研究旨在通过利用富有想象力的形式，使乌干达青年能够发挥作用，同时最大限度地减少与证词叙述相关的创伤风险。与此同时，创造性小说提供了想象其他生活和其他思想的可能性，从而呈现出跨越公共群体的移情认同发展的最佳潜力（Keen; Nussbaum）。本研究利用了这些特点，将青年创作的短篇小说作为乌干达中学教材的基础，这些教材将利用文学写作的移情潜力来发展跨种族的团结形式，并围绕冲突后的青年需求开展更大规模的对话。该研究还将使用这些作品作为批判性话语材料，这将有助于重新考虑乌干达的发展需求，通过表达性小说的媒介揭示被淹没的叙事和冲突遗产的影响。通过将年轻的乌干达人重新定位为知识生产的推动者，该项目凸显了迄今为止前所未闻的声音和前所未见的发展需求。与位于坎帕拉的非洲文化卓越中心和乌干达烈士大学非洲研究中心合作，该项目将为当地带来重大利益，包括：教学材料和教育实践的发展；研究能力;共同生产的知识交流；扩大影响网络；新观众;以及对高层发展政策的地方性干预。

Since its independence in 1962, Uganda has been beset with a series of conflicts. Ranging from cross-border 'spillover' conflict from South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the high-profile North/South conflict led by Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, these incidents of violence and terror have characterised Uganda's post-colonial history. Extant development studies suggest a link between deep-seated ethnic rivalries forged during the colonial era, uneven economic development, corruption in governance and the asymmetrical distribution of resources as key drivers of conflict in the country (Otunnu, 'Causes and Consequences of the War in Acholiland'; ACCS, 'Northern Uganda Conflict Analysis'). While the main brunt of conflict has been carried by the north, Uganda as a whole has been beset by its effects. Young people have been made particularly vulnerable, both in the high-profile cases of child recruitment in conflict, including the sexual trafficking of young women and girls, and in the overall effects of unemployment, instability and political conflict across the nation as a whole.While a number of high-level studies, development analyses and policy recommendations exist in the Ugandan context, these by and large fail to escape the pitfalls associated with development discourse, particularly as it pertains to the African continent, with the result of disempowering local populations and de-centring the everyday experience of conflict and its afterlives. As James Ferguson ('Global Shadows') argues, the rhetorical and discursive apparatus around development cannot be decoupled from its material effects and, more often than not, inefficacy in practice (see also Escobar, 'Encountering Development'). These complaints have become commonplace in postcolonial approaches to African development, where the perceived distance between the lived experience of African populations and discursive theorisation about them has been blamed for the continuation of colonialist patterns of exploitation (eg Jolly, 'Global Development Goals: The United Nations Experience'). The proposed research is a pilot study which seeks to redress these pitfalls by developing interdisciplinary methods to enable new understandings of conflict, its legacies and its impact among youth populations, using creative writing as a tool for self-expression and empowerment. The proposed research seeks to enable the agency of Ugandan youth, whilst minimising the risks of trauma associated with testimonial narrative through the leveraging of imaginative forms. At the same time, creative fiction offers the possibility for imagining other lives and other minds, and thereby presents the best potential for the development of empathetic identification across communal groupings (Keen; Nussbaum). This research exploits these characteristics, using youth-produced short fiction as the basis for teaching materials aimed at secondary-schools in Uganda which will use the empathetic potential of literary writing to develop cross-ethnic forms of solidarity and enable larger-scale dialogue around youth needs post-conflict. The research will also use these writings as critical discursive material which will enable a re-consideration of development needs in Uganda, uncovering the submerged narratives and impacts of conflict's legacy through the medium of expressive fiction. By re-centring young Ugandans as agents of knowledge production, this project foregrounds heretofore unheard voices and unseen development needs.Partnering with Writivism, run by the Kampala-based Centre for African Cultural Excellence, and the Centre for African Studies at Uganda Martyrs University, the project will lead to significant local benefits including the development of: pedagogical material and educational practice; research capacity; co-produced knowledge exchange; increased networks of influence; new audiences; and vernacular interventions into high-level development policy.