The Paradoxes of History and Memory in Post-Colonial Sierra Leone [Paperback]

This collection of essays, showcasing the works of very accomplished and prominent scholars of Sierra Leones history at home and abroad, seeks to reconfigure the western paradigms of engagement and interpretation of historical knowledge about Sierra Leone and re-center the conversation to include and reflect indigenous perspectives of the nations past through exploring social constructs such as class, gender, identity formation, nation building, resistance, and social conflict. The writers examination of the significance of these issues in recalibrating western notions of history and its sociocultural context illustrates the various paradoxes and transformative moments in Sierra Leone and West Africa.In an ethos of endemic corruption, ethnic-based politics, degraded educational structures, environmental pollution, and praetorian ambiguity, this anthology identifies the way to renewal. It plumbs the disquieting tensions of the trenches, gives voice to the marginalized, and rescues us from the cynical narratives of elite interests and personages. We see grassroots potential for relevance and verve, and our editors supply a long-felt need for interpretations of complex phenomena of gender, race, ethnicity, and social class.Using Sierra Leone as a case study, this book examines the nature of knowledge production and interpretation of African history since the decade of African independence. This anthology provides critical reflections on major themes such as ethnicity, class, gender, identity formation, nation building, resistance, and social conflict.This anthology reflects the complex processes in the production of historical knowledge and memory about Sierra Leone and its diaspora since the 1960s. The processes, while emblematic of experiences in other parts of Africa, contain their own distinctive features. The fragments of these memories are etched in the psyche, bodies, and practices of Africans in Africa and other global landscapes; and, on the other hand, arelsª