'Independence is not given, it is taken': the Ivorian cinquantenaire and competing history/ies of independence

This article explores competing histories of independence in Côte d'Ivoire. The 2010 commemoration of fifty years of independence led to competing histories about how and if the nation achieved independence in 1960. The postelectoral crisis of 2010–2011 that followed soon afterwards has been in...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nations and nationalism 2013-04, Vol.19 (2), p.276-295
Main Author: N'Guessan, Konstanze
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
African history
Collective Memory
Commemoration
Constructivism
Côte d'Ivoire
France
Historiography
Independence
Independence Day
International community
Ivory Coast
Laurent Gbagbo
Mass Media
National commemoration
National identity
Nationalism
nationalist history
Norms
Presidents
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This article explores competing histories of independence in Côte d'Ivoire. The 2010 commemoration of fifty years of independence led to competing histories about how and if the nation achieved independence in 1960. The postelectoral crisis of 2010–2011 that followed soon afterwards has been interpreted by supporters of the outgoing president Laurent Gbagbo as an attempt by France and the international community to re‐colonise Côte d'Ivoire. The article asks how different versions of this history are connected to different political projects and how they have changed through time. The article will analyse these processes of meaning‐making in a historiology of Ivorian independence, thus contributing to constructivist accounts of nationhood, collective memory and historiography. The paper thus argues that different media of recalling the past in the present, such as commemoration and historiography, should be studied in a complementary manner to understand how (joint) remembering and forgetting are tools and mirrors of nations at work.
ISSN:1354-5078
1469-8129
DOI:10.1111/nana.12020