CFP: “The aftermath of war: negotiating homecoming, memory, and trauma”

Call for papers
Panel “The aftermath of war: negotiating homecoming, memory, and trauma”

CIEA11, 11th Iberian Conference on African Studies
School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon
2-4 July 2020

Recently the study of memories of wars of liberation and the end of empires in Africa have sparked renewed interest. Political narratives shifted, and the time that has elapsed created space for new analysis. The study of these memories, forms of representation, commemorative efforts, fictional and non-fiction accounts have enriched our understanding and provided further nuanced perspectives on the experiences of soldiers and their families.
Taking up historically and geographically diverse cases from post-colonial countries and former colonial powers, this panel questions how soldiers and their families navigate the post-colonial spaces in Africa and Europe. It will address the memories and legacies of war, and the way they play out in the lives of soldiers in diverse settings. By inviting inquiries into the lives of veterans on opposing sides of liberation wars, the panel probes the parallels and distinctions between combatants in different settings, the potential for networks of veterans to bring about forms of inclusion and exclusion, political demands, and shifts in understandings of war and its consequences.

Some of the questions we aim to address are:
How do soldiers and their families navigate the changes that followed the end of the wars and the return home?
How are war memories negotiated, commemorated or silenced in the post-colonial context?
What bearing do processes of memorialization have in the struggle for political recognition of combatants?
By bringing diverse perspectives into discussion we hope to illuminate shared experiences of war, trauma, and memorialization, in historically and geographically distinctive contexts.

Convenors: Ana Margarida Sousa Santos (ICS-ULisboa) and Maria José Lobo Antunes (ICS-ULisboa)
Margarida.sousasantos@gmail.com, mjose.antunes@ics.ulisboa.pt

Abstracts should be submitted here, until 24 February 2020