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

自1962年独立以来，乌干达一直被一系列冲突所困扰。从南苏丹和刚果民主共和国的跨境“外溢”冲突到科尼领导的上帝抵抗军领导的引人注目的南北冲突，这些暴力和恐怖事件成为乌干达后殖民历史的特征。现有的发展研究表明，殖民时代形成的根深蒂固的族裔竞争、经济发展不平衡、治理腐败和资源分配不对称是该国冲突的主要驱动因素(奥图诺，“阿奇兰战争的原因和后果”；ACCS，“乌干达北部冲突分析”)。尽管北部在冲突中首当其冲，但乌干达作为一个整体一直受到其影响的困扰。青年尤其容易受到伤害，在备受瞩目的冲突中招募儿童的案件中，包括贩卖年轻妇女和女童的案件中，以及在全国各地失业、不稳定和政治冲突的总体影响中都是如此。虽然乌干达有一些高级别的研究、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未能逃脱与发展讨论有关的陷阱，特别是与非洲大陆有关的发展，其结果是使当地民众丧失权力，分散了日常的冲突经历及其后果的中心。正如詹姆斯·弗格森(《全球阴影》)所说，围绕发展的修辞和话语机制不能脱离其物质影响，而且往往与实践中的无效脱钩(另见埃斯科瓦尔，《遭遇发展》)。这些抱怨在后殖民时期对非洲发展的方法中已经变得司空见惯，人们认为非洲人的生活经历与关于他们的话语理论之间的差距是殖民主义剥削模式继续存在的原因(例如Jolly，《全球发展目标：联合国的经验》)。拟议的研究是一项试验性研究，旨在通过开发跨学科方法，使青年群体能够对冲突、其遗留问题及其影响有新的了解，并利用创造性写作作为自我表达和赋权的工具，从而纠正这些缺陷。拟议的研究试图使乌干达青年的机构，同时通过利用富有想象力的形式将与证言叙述相关的创伤风险降至最低。与此同时，创造性的小说提供了想象其他生活和其他思想的可能性，从而为发展跨社区群体的同理心提供了最好的潜力(KINE；Nussbaum)。这项研究利用这些特点，使用青年创作的短篇小说作为针对乌干达中学的教材的基础，这将利用文学创作的同理心潜力来发展跨种族形式的团结，并使之能够围绕冲突后青年的需求进行更大规模的对话。研究还将使用这些著作作为重要的论述材料，使人们能够重新考虑乌干达的发展需要，通过富于表现力的小说揭示冲突遗留问题的叙述和影响。通过将乌干达青年重新定位为知识生产的推动者，该项目突出了迄今闻所未闻的声音和未知的发展需求。该项目与设在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，将为当地带来显著的好处，包括发展教学材料和教育实践；研究能力；共同产生的知识交流；扩大影响网络；新的受众；以及对高级别发展政策的本土化干预。

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.