Forgive and Forget? Mau Mau and the Making of Memory and History in Post-Colonial Kenya

原谅和忘记？

• 批准号: 2598065
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Warwick
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2598065
• 关键词: Forgive; Forget; Mau; Making; Memory

This research will examine processes of memory and history-making in Kenya since the end of the MauMau War, which led to Kenya's independence in 1963. Previous scholarship has shown how both Kenya'spost-independence government and the British government sought to 'forget' - and to suppress therecord of - the events of the Mau Mau War. In the last two decades, that selective amnesia has beenoverturned, by academic studies and by popular and official memorialization of Mau Mau. Through in-depth oral histories, this project will explore the ways survivors and their descendants on all sides of theWar, including those Kenyans who collaborated with the British counterinsurgency, have rememberedMau Mau. Much of the scholarship seems to assume that these memories have simply lain dormant inthe popular mind, awaiting their activation by academic projects. This project will dispute thisassumption and investigate how people have reflected on their experiences and talked about them inways that constitute memory-work even in the years when remembering was discouraged.I will conduct around eighty oral history interviews to explore what popular memory looked like in theaftermath of political forgetting, and what forms memory-work took between the end of the Mau MauWar and the beginning of researchers' interest in it. This will involve a consideration of the inter-generational nature of memory-work, and the ways subsequent generations have taken ownership andauthorship of Mau Mau memories. The research will also engage with the 'visible' sites of Mau Mau'spopular memory in Kenya: Veteran's Associations, photographs and documents held in people's homes,and the locations of former concentration camps, for example.

这项研究将考察自毛毛战争结束以来肯尼亚的记忆和历史创造过程，毛毛战争导致肯尼亚在1963年独立。此前的学术研究表明，肯尼亚独立后的政府和英国政府都试图“忘记”--并压制--茅茅战争事件的记录。在过去的二十年里，这种选择性失忆症已经被学术研究和对茅茅的流行和官方纪念活动所颠覆。通过深入的口述历史，这个项目将探索战争各方的幸存者及其后代，包括那些与英国反叛乱合作的肯尼亚人，如何纪念茅茅。许多学者似乎认为，这些记忆只是潜伏在大众头脑中，等待着学术项目的激活。这个项目将反驳这一假设，并调查人们如何反思他们的经历，并以构成记忆工作的方式谈论它们，即使在记忆被抑制的那些年。我将进行大约80次口述历史访谈，以探索政治遗忘后大众记忆是什么样子，以及在茅茅战争结束到研究人员开始对它感兴趣期间，记忆工作采取了什么形式。这将涉及到记忆工作的代际性质的考虑，以及后代人获得茂茂记忆的所有权和作者的方式。这项研究还将涉及肯尼亚茅茅个人记忆的“可见”地点：例如，退伍军人协会、人们家中保存的照片和文件，以及前集中营的位置。